Vacant

At first, love is so precarious. A house of cards, baby steps, so fragile the wind might whisk it away. But real houses have scoffolding. Babes learn to walk. If the storms don't come - and sometimes even if they do - the love stays. Those little mud houses weathered by thousands of years and sit bearing the marks of their inhabitants. Did they die there or did they move on? Make new houses, new artwork, growing handprints in the mud. What was our love? It wasn't the building we planned, it went all off schedule. The scoffolding came down and we couldn't recognize what was standing before us, like a maze, like a museum, like a murder house, it seemed full of ghosts, a place better left alone, better boarded up. But when we turned the knob, when we come back, the door still opens and we recognize the furniture. I went and built more houses and you stayed here, and I pretended it wasn't a prison, and so did you. Prisons aren't a choice. The paintings are covered in dust, the books are dormant, old letters tucked away, old letters you said were gone, but I only found them when you left. The house stayed strong even as you grew weak. The bones of our love shook in anger as your bones begain to show. People say old buildings breathe when they settle, is that the sound I hear when I close my eyes, or is that the sound of your breath, the hum of machines that keep you alive. Our home has no name, no address, this great secret we built that has become my secret grief. People can see you break apart and they don't know that behind you my whole life is breaking apart, this unlisted place that we kept behind the shade of the distance between us. I can count the ribs in your chest, I can see the flutter of your heart behind the skin, no more muscle to hide it away, and I wonder if it will beat faster if I hold your hand tighter. When you left, I almost couldn't tell, besides the color gone from your lips. Your eyes stayed open and drug heavy, but your lips turned white. The power has gone out. I am supposed to shut the windows now, brick the fireplace and block the rooms, but I finally move in to the place we made for us and now is only here for me. What is prison without any inmates, a graveyard without any bodies, a body without a soul. I take your place and tidy up in a home I never could bring myself to stay in with you, and now I stay in alone, and wonder if you are on the otherside, getting a room ready for me.