At the hostess’s party
the women let go—in her absence—
They made the house theirs,
wresting it from its own, other order.
They painted one wall black, took the joists down
from the attic floor with reciprocating saws
so that the dust from storage drifted
onto a carpet retaining the smells
of Afghani men smoking over
changes to forget, the shadows
of children on the walls, how the stones
crack and call in the cold.
The women broke holes in the walls
to watch each other through,
wrote no men allowed with sugar
dispensed from a can
on a picture window that looked
onto the road to work or the passage to places
where the hostess might be waiting,
in the cool floor of the canyon,
in what high shadows where birds
weave their nests.
In a world where bridges will fall
and the Minotaur crouches
with an empty cup in those narrow
spaces between the houses.
