This House
The smell has gone,
the closed but now opened-up, why-don’t-you-come-here-more-often smell. And all the words we never use anymore must be hiding in these cupboards with the nearly-decks of cards and the baby oil. Rubber balls under the deck without the rubbery smell, and absent birds gone from absent trees.
These wet bricks aren’t chancy,
like he called them once. They’re just wet. Clean isolation now desolate.
This quiet takes our breath from us,
takes the ends of sentences. We can’t see our sepia selves twirling. Can’t smell the Banana Boat and smoke.
Silence instead of the ripping of sweetcorn from husks.
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