A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

The smell of phenyl chokes the room and all its other smells. The smell of shit and pain and newspapers. The claustrophobia of my childhood inches closer and closer as the walls coloured with jaundice and 'aesthetic' yellow light, snake cool and familiar along my blind hands.The scarlet screams of mother and her nocturnal bathroom operas are just another routine, a sleepless scribble of sounds in the house. The cats theatrically stare at the furniture, the dogs run in epileptic vigour, chasing a figment of the REM cycle, and I sit down on my pot, wash my hands dutifully and take slow, careful steps avoiding toe-stubs across the living room. A hard rain's gonna fall