You can't open the shutters, clean the blinds, scrub the glass
And hope the light chases the ghosts away.
This room is poisoned with the creaks and groans of times long past
Lingering voices scream in pain and agonize when the light strikes their faces
The fruit is rotting, the flies are swarming
Mouse droppings on the counter
A stale thickness hovers in the air and the dust settles.
This is how you left it.
These chambers cold and hard
The air is stagnant and I can't breathe too well down here.
Faintly, I can remember some joy in these halls
But this approaching darkness steps on my chest.
This is how you left my heart.
This cold rotting blackness resides in my chest and keeps me breathing
Two years, it took me,
In skilled labor and practiced composure
I repainted the shutters and replaced the glass
New blinds and new light that flooded in and warmed the air
I tore up the flooring and laid new, strong, hardwood floors
Smelling of a lemony cleanliness that reminds me of spring
I scrubbed the counters and decorated them with the utensils and tools and electronics of my choosing
Filled the gleaming, shining shelves in newly manufactured wooden cabinets with smooth, silver knobs
With flour, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, lemon zest
Bread crumbs and honey, chocolate and butterscotch
Pots and pans to bake my heart's content in the sweetest pies and cakes
Tarts and turnovers, the sweetest of the sweetness
I flooded the refrigerator
Humming in its electric glory
Cool white doors and bright intense light shining outward
I filled this magnificent beast
With rich, hearty lettuce, crunchy carrots and crisp cucumbers
With the greenest sprouts, the ripest, juiciest tomatoes and most pink radishes
The strangest, most beautiful, most exotic fruits
With lulo and mango and bananas and guavas and the fruits for which I do not yet know a name.
And I opened the windows and washed the curtains and tablecloth
So the room breathes with the afternoon breeze
And sings with the dawning lark
And is warmed by the rising sun, peaking through the pine trees.
The hallways are alive again.
The chambers resound with a rekindled happiness.
And here you come back, wishing to put your feet up
And lay in bed together again.
You wish to be a part of this home once more
To come back on Sunday nights
Smelling like summer and carelessness and heart burst
To rest your arm in the crook of my hip, where my ribs end and my skin extends to reach my wide, bony hips
That's your place, here.
But the windows don't forget how it feels when the sun doesn't feel like shining
And the floorboards remember how it felt when you stomped your heavy feet
Out of here.
This home was not built in a day.
You can't expect to slap a rug down and call it "ours."
I need to know you're the one
Who will mop when the kitchen floor is dirty
And who will open the shutters every morning
To let the light in.