We spent the night scrubbing
the floors, eye to level with dust
encrusted baseboards waiting
to reveal decades of lead paint
beneath. The absence of some
thing, a problem uncountable,
still we had to count them
all. Parasitic how existence
is only an aspect of another
object. I made the god-shaped
hole myself, was not born
with one though I let it evolve
like the type everyone else
has lived silently with.
Hunting on my knees
for wiry black strands of dog
fur left to irritate our sinuses
and ingrain into painted
over mold in unventilated
rooms. Rooms with high
ceilings and cobwebs
trapezed corner to corner
the suspension so tightly
strung I have to pull it
back to me like an anchor
stuck in a bank. I would
live in a haunted house
if I wanted to live in
a haunted house. All
catalogable features
appearing during sleep,
tall doorframe mouths
aping Ionic columns,
sounds on the staircase
connected to a burrowed
closet, familiar visions
amorphous and darkly
reverberating though we
just rent here, we pass through
not unlike the college kids
younger and before us
who screamed when they
showed us the basement.
Still wanting to believe
in portals, those voids
shot through a tree trunk
revealing what exists on
the other side, not the same
as this side of course, both
sides a not-mirror of each
other, but knowing there are
simply things with holes
in them, a flaw in design
and cheaply threaded.