For Sale: A House Newly Built
Thomas Leonard Shaw
In the still nights
the sound of the door hinge winding
back on itself echoes through
this empty house.
I stare at the ceiling
each inch of paint a different color
as if difference was what made this house
more so than the people that built it.
We say love is built like a house
but a house demands bricks and sweat
where love demands nothingness
and establishes itself even in lacking.
Your picture on the door reminds me
of the visit we made to the carpenters
a few months before the trip to the hospital
asking for bookshelves instead of diagnoses.
This house was built on empty land
you holding me against the post of the fence
telling me of our imaginary children.
When the wind slams against the wall
and the wood creaks again as if duty to me
I will remember the dreams we pulled out of thin air
on a premise of nothing you offered everything.
The house stands
No longer as promise but as reminder
of what is broken when something is built
and of the spaces between love and loss.