You’re not allowed to step into the house.
You’re not allowed to open your mouth too widely,
your ugly teeth bared and gnashing. You aren’t allowed to be that close,
so close your mouth and sip your tea through the window,
where expensive and matching dining chairs circle around a table
set for nothing, for no one,
because you can’t touch that silverware. You can’t wash those plates.
You can’t fit, your neck so long that your head is in the clouds,
your not-quite-bony legs serving as a reminder that your feet are still on the ground.
Can you feel your heart in your throat?
The way that it pulses every time you rest your chin on the roof or
the way it pounds when you’re at the doorway, much too close to this house
that you bought and built and you aren’t allowed inside. Why won’t they let you inside?
Why won’t you let yourself inside?
Invite yourself in; maybe your head will come down from the clouds and
your heart won’t beat quite so obnoxiously loud and you can
smile in a mirror while flashing all your ugly teeth.
You can’t build a house without thinking about how you’ll fit into it:
that’s basic architecture, basic design, basic
everything that you never bothered to learn,
bent on keeping your head so much higher than the ceiling.
Asymmetric, sloping,
like your shoulders and the alignment of your eyes
and your crooked smiles and tied up tongue,
like white lies and broken foundations
and a doorknob that doesn’t work,
doesn’t turn,
won’t let me in
despite the fact that I built this place with my bare hands.
It doesn’t recognize me anymore, a fantasy
so tangled up with reality
that all the nightmares and anxiety ruin even my cloudiest positivity.
I built myself a world and a future
in which I myself am not allowed to enter.
Maybe I should brush up on my knowledge of basic architecture,
because God, I’m horrible at interior design
and mapping things out ahead of time.
I’ve tried just living without but the winter gets chilly and weakens my bones
and it really sets in without the warmth of a home.