Unhouse

Unhouse

There is a house that isn’t there.

Not all the time.

Don’t look directly at it –

It will bend out of your view,

And that hurts.

Leaves an empty spot in your brain.

It goes away,

In a week or two,

If you don’t look again.

There is a house not always there.

Don’t walk past at night,

Not even with a friend.

The noises it doesn’t make

Cannot be unheard and

Won’t let you sleep,

Like icicles inside the ears,

Or an itch that speaks murder.

There is a house that should not be there.

No one built it,

No one lives there,

They just pass by the windows sometimes.

Like shadows of time biters,

They hypnotize out of the corner of your eye.

They would only borrow your existence,

And return it to you emptied.

There is a house that has never been there.

Just a space at the corner,

That doesn’t feel unoccupied,

And seems most devoid of life.

But no one ever buys the lot

When it is vacant.

And no one ever looks that way

When it is not.

The question is:

Who is mowing the grass?

Cliff Lake 10/6/2024

CliffSongs