The Notes We Left

the acrid smell of burning plastic from the faulty wire in the fridge was mostly gone when we came back to pack up whatever we could move in my corolla and my father’s kia sedona

the landlord had left an angry note on the door and piss on the toilet seat we packed pots pans the printer clothes whatever we knew we would need

the fridge had started to smell of hot coolant and we didn’t open it knowing there were rotten eggs inside on the front my spouse wrote in sharpie that the fire department told us it should not be plugged in

he couldn’t stop writing on the windows he wrote that the landlord should replace the glass that was broken before we moved in over a year before and above a hole in the floor added that he should fix that too he even left a post-it on the toilet a friendly reminder to clean it up

and leaving the furniture we could not move we fled that place one last time drove off up route two and four ninety-five away from fitchburg and the lingering acrid smell