“A House Dissolves” by Gabriel Deibel

 

The evening came and I woke up

to curl myself in your wool. Pale blues and creamy whites

where your whispers still hold. Our house is

like the warble of blue jays. Under gray clouds

that run down the length of my chest.

Those remains rot. Coated in blisters and sores.

 

 

My limbs stretch out to hold you while

eye sockets fill with biting tears.

My screams are

hollow.

They never reach you.

 

So our house dissolves.

Blown away in specks of ash and dust.

It’s nothing but air.

 

You laid down right here.

Do you know that? For three days

you gasped for oxygen

in shallow breaths.

To bury your eyes in deep

and bitter snow.

 

Now I’ll trade this liquor for blood.

To wander this mess of rooms I barely recall.

Wailing and wishing for absence.

I soak in bathtubs now, I try to scrub fat from bone

We both know winter comes, in years and months it still comes

Like your veins drowning in morphine

 

I must clean this