Treehouse

a brief encounter by Jean Glaub

Christina was the Trojan Horse of roommates.
May she rot in hell. It all went wrong
the Saturday she made me apple pancakes,
and now my favorite betta fish are gone.
I’d put an ad on Craigslist and presumed
my rent would halve and both of us would win.
I let my guard down, lulled by breakfast food,
while Chrissy let the Grecian army in.
They partied in the living room, then crashed
in random drunken heaps like sleeping tramps.
The beer cans vexed me, and the rampant trash,
experiments with cooking, broken lamps…
What really set me off, though, was the dish
they made by frying all my betta fish.