Because tomorrow I will be almost thirty,
I've decided to buy a house
with rolling floors, windows all painted shut
by the ones who abandoned it last winter
who didn’t worry about stiff paint brushes
drying to the countertops, stout furniture legs
and the oil in the rain slipping down the street.

Somewhere there are layers
of the dead that make up the soil,
paleozoic dirt clods hatching bone seeds
and plumes of thatch. And from behind
my book on the many uses of short kitchen knives
I remember the feel of my forearm
against a deer’s neck—watching myself
in the black glass eye
and reaching in deep for blood
like a pioneer in snow.