Houses' Secrets

Houses have their secrets…

Yawning walls, sighing doors, smoothed-over privies,

And window springs that shake and clatter.

They all have tales to tell, and wondrous fine.

Scary, too. Sadistic, sometimes.

Did you ever hear about that basement where all the slings were hung--

Chains and leather and whips?

You think the story will be something scintillating

Until you hear about the blood.

Carnivores like to sleep in dark, earth-wrought shelters.

They know what will happen if they don't.

So you wonder about the houses with the curtains shut tight.

You wonder more about the ones without curtains…

Just bedsheets draped here and there, or worse:

I once saw a house with cardboard covering every window.

"Is it boarded up?" I wonder,

Just as a man in a greasy jumpsuit

Steps out the door

For his morning commute.

Nests. Some people call houses nests.

Smish-smashed, thrown-together little organic things.

Found things.

You do a loose structure

Then overlay with soft things.

Voila! Home.

Birds like those. After all,

The soft things soak up the blood of their prey.

For later eating.

Mounds. Dirt mounds, that's another.

Underground creatures like to weave

Mazelike pathways through the earth,

Knowing they'll never get lost.

Their colonymates will lead them where they need to go.

Humans couldn't abide such an arrangement.

They get lost in their own heads.

Houses know. "Where are the keys?" they say,

Five minutes after they put them down,

Right where they always do.

Secrets. They're all there, just hidden.

Not underground, but above.

In the soft things and the hard.

Houses keep them.

They know what will happen if they don’t.