You’d have to pay us
Could you pay us enough
To live for a stretch
Again in that house
Rippling through rooms
Papered with boys
Papered with dogs
As a means of escape imagining
Ourselves into every bad painting
Even ones of the purplest hell?
One of us moved
Through the house like a draft
She was tired
She said
She was empty
She was letting her body
Thin out and grow hairy
One day we brought
A picnic to her room
Spread it out like a stain
Waited for days
Checked our faces
In the tiny round mirrors embedded
In the skirt she’d left
We knew she’d abandoned
The house on a whim
(Like a blazer)
(Or a newborn)
We watched the apples soften
We watched the bread turn blue
We noted the second the sparkling
Water went still