All my dreams are of houses.
Hallways narrow to wakefulness.
Try to make sense of a door that leads to the room I’m in,
the intruder in the window, the devil in the cellar.
They say dreaming of houses indicates
unexplored corners of the mind.
What can this mean to an overthinker?
My creativity feels just out of reach -
a groping in the darkness, a dim knowledge
that the surface of the water is just above me,
a Peter Pan shadow that eludes capture.
Is it the looking to the light that blinds me?
My eternal hopefulness? My light-filled rooms?
I’m drawing the shades on inspiration.
In darkness my shadow surrounds me.
Does it matter which room I’m in?
I imagine the darkest corner of my house
is the one where Death places the tool in my hand.
But all he becomes is fodder for contemplation.
What else is there? Every repulsive thing I haven’t been
brave enough to say. Desire and revulsion.
Bits of bloody self I cut off years ago.
May I become a collage artist here in the dark.
Something horrible pasted onto the tenderest piece of my heart.
A smear of red, sanguine lust. Ashes of some joy my father tried to burn.
It’s an acerbic, unsettling picture.
Where light shines, shadows fall