Poem - Life partners refracted

When you live in a glass house,

You wait

For permission to breathe, walk,

dress, orgasm.

You nap in the sun freely,

fully clothed.

(For fear of sending out an unintentional invitation

to the ones closest to you.)

You wonder what the other sees

through the sheets of glass,

when you do something that you’ve had to show them how to do

Over and over again.

You wonder what little worlds would form -

in the piles of dirt, if you just dropped everything.

Like microscopic slides

that show little microbes travelling down roads they paved,

together as a community.

The house does not creak, it squeaks;

like bites of rubbery egg between moments of silence.

But don’t you see from your viewing perch?

We don’t walk on eggshells in this house.

We wipe the mess up off the floor and off our faces.

Eggs don’t break this home so easily.

Still, It’s not a matter of if it comes down, but when:

As the casting stones thrown out the way

all roll back to the house’s sinking walls with evermore pressure.

You are just as exposed as me -

as we sit idly in different rooms,

Looking for niceties in the structure.

Only to find etches and clouded smears probed by glaring rays of light;

giving us yet another reason to cast our glance and distract ourselves.

Let’s hope the forest fires takes this one.

As I’d rather die in molten silica

than cut myself along jagged edges

while trying to find each others way through a wreckage.

So let’s keep this going for as long as we can.

Then next time,

we can live side by side,

in cute little houses.

Do you think someone living in a glass house would write nice things?

Whose fiery licks was it you think forged these walls?