I Found Dried Shit Out In The Hallway

I found dried shit out in my hallway, like the South's forgotten flag, just sitting there, like a testament to all the things we won't talk about. The landlord's a bastard, the neighbors ain't worth a damn, but there's something about this place that stinks more than rot— it's the heat, the sweat, the ignorance clinging like thick mud to the soles of my feet. No trespassing signs hammered into every yard, as if the world stopped just past the fence line. You can hear ‘em inside— the whispers, the cracked voices, the way they shut their windows whenever someone walks by. Yes, she answers her door in nothing but panties, her eyes half-open, a cigarette hanging like some tired flag off her lip. She no longer cares, not about the trash in the hall, not about the kids screaming in the lot outside. The sound of children everywhere— like mosquitoes buzzing, like they're born knowing this is the way of things, this is where the world begins and the sidewalk ends. They don't ask many questions. They don't wonder why the fences are so tall, why the sky looks so tired, why the cracks in the walls feel like prison bars. Ignorance, they say, is bliss. But it ain't. It's just the way you close your eyes when the sun burns too bright, when the heat gets too much. It's just the way you pretend the shit in the hall ain't there, doesn't smell, waiting, hard as stone, like a monument to all the things you'd rather not see.