honey & lime

speaking to the brisk morning, the only reply is wind

let me be a home, you say, a bed

that keeps you coming back,

 

childhood; wild wood, openfaced mountain

veined with recession. 

 

the tangle of chain link,

a thicket of bruised limbs and ivy.

 

i tell you that my greatest fear

is that i will spend my time building something

no one will ever want to live in 

 

and you say silly boy,

 

a house is not a home, or a tombstone or brick oven,

is not a tree stump in the backyard we drive our nails deeper into,

is not a mausoleum draped in plastic flowers. 

or the weight of the bodies it holds inside.

 

for we do not consider a haunt before the emptiness,

a stranger once told me, until a soft shell sags quietly

and disappears into the dull warmth of fog.  

 

curious, then, the sound of leaf and bramble underfoot,

a deafening cacophony of release. the geese have arrived today.

i know this from their song. 

an echo in the stairwell. door chime against tired walls.

 

the teapot screams from upstairs, a forest of lungs. 

asks me where the steam has gone.

 

i don’t know, i say. 

 

i haven’t seen a ghost in years.