Edging

My mother worries about me --
The smell from my room.
She cannot see the faecal stains
that blur the divide
between bed-edge and floor --
I am glad now of
the seventies-style carpet
I always thought was shit.
The smell has become normal.

My friend talks of passage --
Rites he must follow
partly for vengeance
partly by proxy
for wasted miscreants.

When he is gone
I smell him at night --
Part of him remains
as the division between
acceptability
and that which I could potentially
be but
as my mother, the smell worries me.