Inverted, comfortable
nightmare, I know you best
through absence: whose selfishness this proves
I can't say. Photos plastered to the front door
like gravestones, invoking a child believed
unchangeable. Do you know I still
dream that room? Why did my disappearance
into those images, hours lost with the boy
captured beside me, give you
nothing to worry over? When I came home
through those same doors with her kiss
on my neck, why did you turn
the whole house on its pilings? Long ago
you said love, you said anything said no matter what --
did you mean this scream instead? Your agony
seared the paint off the walls, drew me
down into the basement
lifted my eyes to the raw beams
steady above me and almost
tumbled me into their arms for good.
