My heart is single occupancy.




Sometimes, there isn’t room for me in my own heart when you make our bed and sleep in it, and when you leave your socks balled up over the vents, when you string your underwear along the northernmost rail of pictures to cover our faces, when you turn all the blinds down, when you turn all the frames face down into oak, into maple, into deep hickory, and finally into bloody cherry; when you exist in my room with me smiling, then frowning, then furrowing, then burrowing deeper, to be buried alive eternally under the covers … after we lie in the bed we made from the wood we chopped, from the wood we sanded, from the wood we finished, from the wood we nailed together: I awake to singed half-brows, to frayed topless winter hats, to scalded rawpink scalps, and to our charred heart.



My heart is single occupancy, and, sometimes, there is not room for me.