Do sealed, sentient houses lament past lives?
Weeping and wailing in woeful loneliness and hollow longing
to be entered and touched
Humid tears drip, dripping from crossbeams and
running down scraped wallpaper in rivulets
that water thirsty roses, shriveled and bleeding stigmata.
Fueled by fervid expectancy,
duped by Faustian desire,
Bereft houses barter enduring rock foundations
for spurious sand castle promises
Of feeling familiar footsteps on splintered floorboards,
and hearing laughter lilting through the echo chambers
in locked rooms,
While heat pipe organs thump in cadence and cadenza
to melt the ice pond quiet, deep and deadening.
Watchful and waiting for company returning
from whence they have wandered
with time and time, seemingly endless: vast, vacuous, and void
Memories’ sepia leftovers crusting on chipped, bone china plates left from the last supper.