Sign up to EliteSkills

The house is crumbling inward.
In every direction water spouts
burst forth, wood floors strain,
windows stick shut.
Paint flakes from skin like eyelids
rubbed early in the morning.
The frozen muscles of the high roof-beams
begin to splinter under the weight of the collapsing roof.
They go one fiber at a time; the sharp crack
of an accidental gunshot
reverberating through the attic each night.
The concrete porch, broken gravestone
of some mis-spent Nephilim,
Begins to shed in chunks;
gray icebergs dot the lawn.

I have given myself to it, in fits and spurts;
Soldered light switches into wrists,
scrubbed insides raw with antiseptic,
reached deep inside the furnace to restart its dying heart
in the still, unmovable winter.

But I do not love it. Some things are too broken to love.

So in the evening hours,
When the house begins to settle,
When the tiny shriek of the faucet becomes unbearably loud
and the heat-dried floors creak and give so much
that I can ply their edges with my toes
When every last fiber of the house shrugs and gives a great collective sigh,
I say to myself, “Good.”

And I plan my escape.