The Corridor’s Slow Decline

The green enamel cup rests on the wet marble ledge. The corridor drops a grade, the bend gentle, and the air smells like stale chlorine and dust. I find the drawing, crayon on thin bond paper, a stick figure family standing by the blue roof of the house that stood on Elm Street in 1988. The corner of the drawing flakes off, papery. I carry it against my thigh. The quiet here is dense, a weight that settled in the small pocket of my chest. Ahead, the pattern of the tile changes. The floor remembers being water; a faint, cold slickness rises up through the grout seams, cooling the soles of my shoes. I hear the slow, drip sound of a constant leak from an unseen pipe, and the water collects at my feet, pooling a foot deep, reflecting the overhead fluorescent lights.