The ever-changing houses

If I made the rules
I would never live with a man again.
Only create houses for myself full
of books of poetry and dainty incense holders,
mismatched stemware, and antique plates with
cracks in perfect places. I would have flowers
and wine delivered to my porch by boys on bicycles
who would ask to stay –
and sometimes I’d say yes,
when eyes would sparkle like water
in a rip tide.

If I made the rules,

I would have a high-rise apartment in the city,
with windows for walls and a view of
lights that shine like lanterns above every tree.
–but the high rise is also simultaneously a small house
in on the edge of an ocean, and in the middle
of a mountain, warmed by sun and animals
and garden growth. It is never cold.

If I made the rules,

I’d hear the sea always, in my ears–
a constant lullaby that immediately
calms anxiety like a warm life-sized feather.
Have dinner parties with fancy cocktails
and oysters, but more often be
completely alone, or with a lover
who only speaks in whispered
phrases sentences like “talk to me”
while landlocked to my eyes,
fingers gripped into my hips like hooks.

If I made the rules,

every day at sunset the witches come
with poems and we read them like werewolves,
drink and dine and crumble all over each other
like ancient bricks. Limbs growing together,
tongues commune and we rule the kingdom
of ever-changing houses majestically.

If I made the rules,

my daughter would see the expanse of kingdoms
before her, build her own houses, invite her own guests.
Construction created out of mothers building
and building and building before her. For her.
We’ve shown her how to manufacture her own fortress.