The House That We Built

"Come in," you said, door propped open wide,
I hadn't seen you in years, or days, or was it just
moments since we had last gazed into the houses
in each other's eyes, and been invited there?

It had been time, to be sure, time between us,
time the consistency of rough plastic that
slowly was made malleable by the hammers
of distance, and subtle healing.

But I knew that house was still there, unfinished,
when I gazed back at you the moment we
met for the (second, third, fourth?) first time.
(how many first times until the right time?)
We had agreed to meet here again, and
I remarked, as I entered, as you held open
the door for me, as I wiped my feet on the rug
I remember buying long ago, when cleanliness
mattered,

That the walls hadn't changed; the lighting fixtures
still hung, half installed, the windows open
and letting a dry breeze waken and stir the sheets
that covered the furniture. The spot on the wall
where you painted you loved me still showing through
the layers of paint we'd used to try to cover it all.
This is what it's like to revisit old haunts,
former loves and former spaces,
former memories, and former faces.

We sat down to tea there, on the sofa we bought
together, and talked about the renovations
we never finished. I suppose, I would say, that
it was my fear that kept the walls from going up,
while we agreed that communication, like time
like space like distance, often becomes insurmountable
when you allow walls to be built elsewhere,
protecting your own heart from someone who wasn't planning
on hurting you in the first place, instead of building walls
to protect the home that would have housed them both.

And here we sit, and I gaze in your eyes,
Or here I sit, and write about that gazing, the looking,
and dream of the day I'll revisit the porticos and hallways
I began building with you, sitting with you perhaps (only perhaps)
with plans to continue our renovation,
Perhaps with plans to take away from there the memories
we made, like one does to the homes of loved ones after their passing,
and allow time and memory and space to rot
the wood and dissolve it back into a nothingness
more suitable than the lurking pain of its lonely presence.

But I hope the loneliness doesn't come in.

And I hope you know that, in all actuality, you wouldn't
be opening the door for me, as I've decided to stay here,
for now, at least, and keep a fire burning in the fireplace
for you. Keep the furniture warm and dusted,
and slowly repair those parts of myself that would help
hold these walls up should you ever knock on the door.
But perhaps this house will become mine, and mine alone.
Perhaps (only perhaps) your feet will never again walk this floor,
and I'll box it up, along with the walls, the lights, the paint,
my memories, your letters to me, my journal entries,
my poems about you, keeping it safe for the sake of the
warmth I always feel when I reminisce on you and I.
I won't dismantle it for a long time from now, though,
as each and every word I ever wrote to you has bled
into these walls and into these cracks and crevices,
and there isn't an eraser big enough to pull them out.

No one understands love. Some people understand these words.
Everyone needs walls to protect their hearts.

I remember first taking your hand and guiding you inside.
In this house were some of the happiest days of my life.
The walls, however half-built, are still walls in which I built
a home. And I will await your knock, however long I have to wait,
and I'll keep the kettle on for that cup of tea with you,
that fresh gaze into your eyes, as the future washes over
and over us and decides what to do with
the house that we built.