These days I’m still adrift,
captain of a childhood tub
that wishes it were a skiff.
Someday I’ll shipwreck & wash up
on a shore just strange
enough to do. Kneeling in foreign muck,
I’ll build a house, shingle to hinge.
Like this. Four walls, each brick a word.
Slant rhymes for roof-slats, arranged
in terza rima to keep rain out. Hard
truths for muntins & panes.
Each door a creaky metaphor from cupboards
to closets. Ideas grand & mean
will waft from the beanstalk
chimney like a kitchen kettle’s whine.
And in the garden, silk-
petaled inspirations will puff
& bloom with incessant talk.
Lydia Friedman is a nineteen-year-old time traveler who once went on a blind date with a marble statue in Vienna. She lives in New England and can be reached by howling into the void, or at www.crookedbutinteresting.wordpress.com.