uplift.

Tonight, dinner is a stolen frozen pizza from the corner store. Jeremy brings it home after work and leaves it on living room floor. He slips off his jacket, the one missing a zipper, and leaves it crumpled in the corner. He retreats into the kitchen and opens the cabinet. The door falls off.
“Careful with the cabinet,” I say from the bathtub, “it’s been tricky.”
“Nice trick,” he says.
“Gets me every time.”
I unplug the drain and, careful not to slip on the bare floor, wrap our towel around my waist. We threw our other towel away because it started growing things, along with the shower curtain, and most of Jeremy’s winter clothes. At first, I thought this one was wet from Jeremy’s morning shower until my nose told me that it was something else. I shout to the kitchen, “Spraying the towel with cologne doesn’t kill the mold.”
“It’s got a high alcohol content?”
His cologne came in a 16-oz plastic bottle. He uses it as his miracle product; all-purpose cleaner, face wash, body moisturizer, mouthwash…etc. I understand toilet bowel cleaner, sure. But his toothbrush wafting the scent in the morning, no.
I drip into the living room and read the instructions for a conventional oven. “Will you preheat the oven to 350?”
“I don’t think it does that trick.” They had turned our gas off weeks ago.
He comes in with a sharpie, picks up the box, writes something, and places it back down.
Cooking Instructions: LET DEFROST ON LIVING ROOM FLOOR. THEN EAT.
I hang the towel, spray it with cologne.
I sit cross-legged in the living room. We say it is fung shui’d, that we are minimalists; Last year, to make rent, we sold our furniture to the new Chinese couple downstairs for $50 and a home cooked meal.
Our furniture is now the pizza box and a zipperless coat lit by an exposed bulb that blinds. After too much wine, we tend to use it to star gaze.
"We can do so much in a day," he tells me.
"We... specifically?"
"Sure," he says. "We specifically as in everyone."