Onto the empty porch of wood and soot
We walked circles across
The slats, never noticing how
The disturbed worms and centipedes
Vied for another second of solitude.
We stared at each other,
Eyes avoiding silence.
I always loved the way you sat,
Legs crossed, eyes braiding calm
Where my chaotic thoughts
Would bury their recovery.
Back then the house was empty,
An oyster shell of post-inhabitance,
You were old money manhandling
The fairy plums of my nomadic dream.
There's something nostalgic and aching
About rearranging furniture,
How a block of space is transformed,
New karma replacing the high-heel scrape
Of another woman's yesterday.
I asked you which room would be yours,
The technicalities of driving a steel
Screw through a patch of brick
For the picture you found in the dorm toss-outs.
Lover of my past, of my today,
Maybe we could stitch some new memories
Into this college town, bury some roots
By the shed where the fig tree spares it's fruit.
Find a way to illuminate the silence
With the banjo beat of Merle or Hank.
The seven-thirty showing was drawing near
And we couldn't keep our hands off one another
When Pink Floyd opened their bag of wishes.
What sequence of matter would be placed
In the empty space of all the other rooms?

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Stacy Lynn Mar is editor-in-chief of the ezine Muse Cafe Quarterly; find her online at stacylynnmar.com.