Houses endure,
and become in some strange continuum,
friends.
Books present their covers.
Artifacts belong to invisible hands,
no one to tell us who they are.
I go about the business
of opening and closing my life.
I have an address that may
or may not explain myself.
A cache of papers that hold
fragments of a story,
irrelevant to wounds,
to the hour by hour tide
of love and happiness in my life.
But the essence of my life
has no way to leave itself
in the walls and windows of the world.
Music leaves a trace,
poems, an excuse,
diaries a voice calling before it drowns.
But our reality is gone
except what moved parallel
to everything left behind,
a fresh shirt,
the taste of water,
the dance between me and others,
and a wakefulness at night
when life seems too much to bear,
catastrophe in the end,
that says inside me,
reread the pages
and say again.