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Description
When the rooms still smelled like grass and cotton,
I hung the walls with fabric, but soon the windows
were cold-coated and grey, and light was scarce;
each day I added strings of minute, dull bulbs
to the ceilings and the cabinets,
every surface was patterned and illuminated.
The yellow lightlines were erratic on faces-
they tracked age on my sister, cat's whiskers
on my father. The shadows shifted
like those of the bare trees outside, swaying
independent as lanterns in the spring nights I
tried to recreate in that room.

All October the walls hummed and hissed,
a system of lungs and veins that breathed
out heat from the housebody that never slept:
towards the solstice, the air around it
froze and crackled,
we craved more light, more warmth nights especially.

It was December when finally
water gasped from the weakspot in my
spring night room, a grinding, heavy
traitorous exhalation that flooded the soft floors
and shorted all the wiring. The place smelled
mildewed and spicy, damp and dark with
empty glass spheres hanging limp off their ropes
in a cold, lightless space.