Empty Rooms

Of all the rooms inside the house inside my heart,
I hate the empty ones the most.
I hate their perfect acoustics,
smooth-paneled walls vibrating with the beating of my heart,
each beat sending echoes down empty corridors,
chasing themselves like the memories of
old friends no longer playing there.
I hate that the sound of my poetry is the only music here,
its occasional self-loathing and contemplative disdain.
And I hate how much I love that sound,
the soft, sweet caress of my pen on paper,
the thoughts yelled loudly against these walls,
thrown against them like unwanted china,
chiseled into them with expert precision - the morse-code of my heart beats -
encapsulated so quietly and soothingly into the pages of my journal,
the only constant friend that sits beside me
in these empty rooms,
when all the other lives and loves have fled.

Home

With words, and questions, you
elicited smiles and laughters
that reminded me of moments
I never had, as if this was the way
it always was, was always meant
to be, this way.

And so I quickly took you in, all of you,
inside the house of bone and sinew
I hadn't shown a living soul
for years.

There is something safe about the
hallways we've constructed:

The walls you built for me with your eyes,
the doors I'd padlocked years ago
re-opening
to rooms I'd never seen before,
spaces you'd redecorated for me
while I slept, the arms you put around me
reaching into my dreams to patch
up all the holes I'd hidden when
I thought I could still keep secrets.

There are still doors to open here,
we know,
but then we've already taken turns
carrying one another across the threshold,
practicing for the moment when
all the walls between us fall,
and it's only us, and our new home,
still standing.