Our house on Xerxes was small,
many windows and a smaller yard.
A forest grew there, trees
my brother and I would climb until
we noticed a sky, until the the ground dropped from us,
a ragged burden dispelled before a multitude of wings uncurling
like ferns above our waists as we ventured
to the basement couch and a patient television.
The television, muted now, glows blue and gentle
and I feel it caress my arm. I open a door
and peer into the night. This is not my house,
but the house of a foreigner. I question the empty street
running past the house. To where does my family walk?
Holding hands? We appear younger and I see how much
my mother and father love each other. I see their eyes
and how they open on each other as if in waking.
When I was sixteen, I called myself
nobody. I liked the sound it made
as if I said it underwater in a storm. Nobody
gazed into the wide open blue,
those days. Nobody cared for their own houses
anymore. Now I want to go back
to that house on Xerxes. I wish I could
unravel it in my fingers and spread it thin as a leaf.
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