【by Paige Phillips】

There’s a severed head in my roommate’s
mini fridge. I don’t remember when he got here,
only that his eyes are peeled grapes with pitted
centers, cloudy and unseeing. His long hair hangs
past the lower shelf and brushes the top of a can
of my favorite seltzer water.

Wait, I remember this guy!
His girlfriend died in an accident last semester
and I think he was institutionalized
but I guess he came back.

The head in the fridge is probably some weird
hazing thing from that new sorority she joined.
I think I saw another girl holding a decomposing
arm under her own like a purse while coming out
of the chemistry building. All those girls are obsessed
with this one grad student whose Dad is very rich.
He (the freeloading son) writes songs for his band
and ferments his own wine in the basement,
which is probably a safety hazard.

My roommate brought me to one of his parties once
but I think my beer got spiked. Sometimes she
comes back to our room naked in the middle
of the night but it’s not so bad besides the blood
and the occasional screaming. The only issue is
ever since this guy’s head ended up in her
fridge, he hasn’t stopped singing from
his shriveled up corpse mouth, and
it’s driving me insane.