GRIEF Poem: BABY’S FIRST HEADQUARTERS, by Marc Consolazio

You were always too big for this house. Too much breath in your lungs. There was always too much to be afraid of outside. Too many roots in your carburetor, too many trees in your eyeline. There was always too much house for you.

The vibrations were always too big for your soul. Too many divinations to be gleaned, too many whispers in your ether. Too few words for what this was. Too many doctors, too much silence, too many answers for no one. Too many times that I just missed his eyes.

You were always too small for this house. There was too much unaccounted for, too few reasons adorned
in a straight face. Too little to share. Too few pistols holstered. There was never enough runway for you to take off from. Never enough closets to hide in.

Often you picked off the currants spelling EAT ME and broadened anyway, wearing this house as a shirt, wearing this house as a hauberk, clasping locks, awash in quietude, in gentle sobs. New houses were built inside the house. Too many stairs. Too few connections. Too many different baseboards on that one stretch of wall. Too few knobs for the doors that it came with, too little passion for adding our own.

I wonder who’s wearing the house now.