walls

this house is made of
glass bones and windowpanes---
we're hiding in spectacle; we're
hiding our voices behind crystal sheetrock
("i can't hear you")
i can still see your fingers
skipping beats across your cheekbones
(you paint portraits with fingerprints,
pressing patterns into faces met in dreams)

you're different now,
butterfly turned silkworm with age---
faded monarch, you're no majesty
(you're made of spiders, little legs
linked and stacked---
there are cobwebs in your eyes,
you can only see in dreams)

we're hiding in vacuums and
pressure-treated walls, locked in silence like
we knew what we were doing when we
shattered
and started leading fragile lives,
shards of who we were
patching cracks in tempered floors
(we're made of glass and
shedding bones---
we sit still for fear of falling)

our lives are printed on the walls,
places where our hands have held us up,
half-remembered journeys around rooms
from before we forgot that we were leaving---
now we'll stay here, now we're trapped;
i'm getting restless, tired of being whole,
i want to fracture,
i want to tear down walls, but
i can't find stones to throw;
these walls are--
we are made of glass--
we know this place,
our scars line up with the foundations
(our hearts reverberate through chambers,
pulses recycled along the walls;
it's all i can hear anymore---
are you listening?)

they said to be quiet,
they told us not to move;
we didn't listen, and we shattered---
we didn't know we were so fragile,
i didn't know you'd break so easily
(it's my fault that you only have
eyes when you're asleep)
i tried to put you back together,
but you're different,
your cracks are showing and
every
heartbeat
makes them
bigger

"you don't know what you're doing"
i didn't listen, and it's too late
to break the walls down,
my hands are broken,
bleeding down the loops and whorls of
all the nightmares printed on
these walls will stand forever