You take a good look somthing
you’ve been avoiding all these years
your skin a kind of peach stucco
the hallway blurred

with clutter. You glue and staple
each shingle each summer add
magenta cerise apple your mother’s
anger your father’s storm

drains and floorboards his tongue
and groove. His silence. You patch
Catholic prayers gilt
wallpaper and beach sand

add undressed
windows your hysterechtomy
scar. A good house is a used place
turned over and passed on

a place of winter noons
layered like the cemetery
with strange names.
You’re still holding everything–

skin cells and your grandmother’s
cookbook broken outlets
and not enough income.
You wanted a light-filled house

with wood floors and unexpected
rooms. A possible place the way
womb hums the sound of home.
What you got were too-small

closets and this hard squint
appraising what you thought you needed
all of it catalogued here in this edifice
of doors and stories and bones.