you watch it drag its fleshy belly along the bathroom tile
contracting and lengthening an inch at a time unfurling
its disgusting business onto your clean floor you have
bleached each surface until bone-white have flung
this particular menace out of the window at least three times
even left a thick perimeter of salt on the sill for months a reminder
that this putrid blistering thing is still intact and is finding
a way inside it will survive the salt and the boot you try to land on it
it will leave again its shining residue in the places
you can’t ignore and as it flaunts survival uncoils an eyestalk
toward the same window you wanted to make its burial
the last of the golden hour sun is wreaking soft light
through the frosted glass and still neither of you see the metaphor
this will become in memory neither of you will ultimately survive
the boot, the salt, the hard landing back in the mud and
when a slug dies it does not leave a skeleton,
only a thin line that lets you know where it has been.