The Patchwork House

Stumble through the cage of darkness.

-

Let your two feet carve tiny pockets in

the cold night, one at a time,

-

until you reach

the warmth and light of home

again.

-

This is where

your dog used to lay,

remnants of fur still

cozy between the carpet fibre,

-

this is where you opened

2015’s Christmas presents,

-

this is where you forgot your troubles

even if

only for a second

-

before the black waters spawned a

tsunami

which soon towered above you

and swallowed the room,

which would fill your lungs

with thick, unmoving sludge.

-

See all of the pictures.

-

Some faces you recognise,

others less so — they seem like

freezing ghosts captured

unwillingly by the camera.

-

Note their red eyes,

immortalised,

their shivering hands behind their backs

or reaching out towards something

but returning to them, empty

still.

-

This is the room where

you kissed your first kiss,

there by the still opened window.

-

It was slightly ajar that night, the last breath

of Summer’s breeze

tickling your arm as you

fell into something new,

as you felt love, and loved,

for the first time.

-

Over there is where

you saw your father

for the last time, when

he didn’t say goodbye but you could feel

his spirit leaving the room while he was still

awkwardly avoiding your hug attempts and

jagged questions.

-

‘How was your day, Dad?’

Silence, and a lost look.

‘Go back to bed.’

-

The room behind the locked door

is the one we never talk about,

the handle treat as if burning so hot

that it’d turn your hand skinless,

-

the memories in it are mostly vague

but they ooze out through

the gaps around the decaying wooden door,

and bring with them the smell of burning.

-

Shadows used to dance beneath it, that same door used to swing open, the room used to be used like any other, you faintly remember decorating it, ’80s pop — Madonna — blasting while you rollered the stony walls at night, but that memory brings another, you remember your tears in here conjuring condensation on the window, heavy breaths, you remember your first pains, remembrances you’d lost or buried or tried to throw away, you remember being taken there and hit, being taken there and left behind, being taken there and beaten until your skin became kaleidoscopic and you were told to wear a too-big-hand-me-down hoodie to hide your cracked fingernails and aching limbs, taken there and told that you were nothing so loud and so many times that it became your preferred name, you remember how the dog would bark from outside and scratch at the door, the marks are still there, the only thing wanting to save you too powerless to do so, the image of your mother bathing in the light of the midnight TV, needle dangling from her arm in an abyss of its own or it burrowing a hole for itself on the floor, hiding, no food in the fridge and your stomach howling with an animalistic hunger, you remember putting that crack in the window trying to get away, the pure fear, the smell of sweat still lingering in the air in the hallway, the body remembers, you remember being so afraid that you would consider jumping, that you would consider anything, that you’d consider burning this place down until it became merely a skeleton, the foundations standing like a upturned gravestone in the night sky, like a memory you were left with while time mercilessly marched on and had other places to be, and you’d feel free at last as the smoke would billow but never really free because you can’t escape yourself, because you can’t scrape away what is engraved without losing more of what’s left of you, because the blood you shed in the process of escaping would prove all too much, your head burning with a thousand rushing images, your breathing and heart rate quicken, your skin turns warm as though struck by the sun itself

-

but the sun

cannot reach here,

-

it cannot touch that

which is nothing.

-

‘Go back to bed’.

An order obeyed

a mistake made,

a cycle

repeated.