anatomy of loss

Vines cover this house in shades of transparent green.

Alive with air and small bugs and tiny suction cups- holding the crawly earth to the wooden box, hugging it, death grip tendrils woven around the windows like Kleenex box cozies.

When you are always cold you forget skin has the ability to relax, smooth across the driftwood bones like melted frosting.

They say lungs are associated with loss.

Breathing

the involuntary oxygen action

Loss

the involuntary suffering state

we never wanna lose a thing

even when we try and deny the feelings or affect

it's still gone, the thing that was lost that we no longer have

Lungs and Loss

why did my breathing stop

?

This house is a block tied up in the toe of green fishnets

inside here I am inside outside

I crank the heat all winter, spring and into summer in Seattle

I refuse to be homeless in my home

My lungs stopped working

when I lost my home

my mom

my self

my loss left me empty of air

for 13 years I have been trying to calm them, the spasming, heaving, aching, tight and terrible lungs.




When I lost it all I lost my oxygen,

they say it's the trauma

the organ

the actions

caused the

organ

to malfunction




I do much better in the heat

when the skin pulled across my chest radiates with heat

a heart inside a vine house gets hotter

lungs release and open

everything opens and one million tears pour out of the houses upstairs windows

the hot rain traces the vines cross hatching the home

when everything is open the furniture inside takes shape

one can begin to make out the color and patterns

it's all soaking and salty

but sturdy under that hot water

a few receipts and wrappers flow out the windows

and lodge themselves like paper flowers in the vine maze along the walls.

She looks like a lady in a dress.

People see it that way, beautiful, decorated, floral.




when it's hot the house breathes

the velvet cushions hold water year round

the floor is warped in a crimped hair kinda way

when it's hot my vine house gets hotter

there is water and furniture lodged in the lungs

the loss left them twitching

a salt water fish left heaving on the dock
flipping flipping then just
heaving

 her lungs were loss