Driving nails and staples
into the floor of a home
void of occupants
is jarring.
Every hammer fall sends waves,
but not the curling
looping wave forms of sound,
against the walls and from those walls
to the floor and through that floor
to the floor below and from that floor
through the ceiling above and back
to ears already raw
with the echo chamber brilliance of
a halogen in a tin foil nest
so close to an iris
the pinned back tears
hiss away in steam
before touching skin.
As I work
without muffs or plugs
to turn the caves into rooms ready
for chairs and couches and
smiling, wine glass clinking,
two point fiver having,
picket fence dreamers
it is hard to swallow
what wet the air has to offer
over my tongue gone
dry and swollen anxious
because I am driving
the spikes and spines
into the bones of a home and
desperately, left and right hands
unsteady in the wash of bang and moan,
ears so hard relied on to sort
the real from the unreal
my eyes so often feed my head and
rendered vestigial,
trying not to wake her bones and
pluck the thread thin nerves of
her sleep, because the body of a home
can reject the incursion of human step
in ways violent. Ways I wish
I did not know.
And so, I work swift and pray
the shadows do not rise and
walk among late afternoon's rays.
