The house next door is hung with icicles,
all along the bricks that remember better times.
I can escape through their window into rooms filled with light,
into lives that seem to stand still.

Here the walls can ring with laughter,
and words that pull people apart.
Light splits you open, pulling on your eyes,
memory fails,
and each day rolls in filled with cracks
and I watched you leave me through the neighbor's window.

I remember the rattling young breath of secrets,
whispered through the gaps in the fence.
Words and teeth grew from from seeds,
we built a primitive world,
dirt roads adjoined our houses,
grown out of feet.

Once our home was gras, whereever we lay our bodies,
it smelled of hay,
beneath suns that took years to set.