October 20, 2020

a list of things needing repair

Not the rain gutter, though that too, or the porch window, though that, too.
Not the torn knee on a pair of jeans or that small nick in a ceramic bowl, 
or the kitchen outlet gone mute, or a draft coming from somewhere you can’t place, 
or the car bumper from that run-in on Swanville Road, or the misplanted hydrangea, or 
the soft tire on a wheelbarrow, or the rust and resistance of the faucet on the upstairs tub, 
or the various cracks and hiccups on the walls, though that too. I’m thinking of the
unlistable things, the collage of avoidances made out of shame, the do-si-dos around
decisions we fear will undo the fabric we’d labored so hard to keep sewn, the voice 
we leave at the perimeter because we imagine that in our tenderness, we can’t or won’t 
be heard. The house will crumble if it must, but don’t you dare fall with it.