Dear new-old house,
You have a well inside you that I've
Stumbled upon.
If you're curious, it's below the AC unit.
I fell through.
Not entirely by accident...
Nothing I do is entirely by accident.
My actions are always some type of weirdly
Conscious bad decision.
I went through.
Well. Not "through" exactly.
My body felt a -transition-
A change in space but not in time.
A shadow world. A shadow...

Dear old-new house,
Now with cold damp stone instead of tile.
Now with snails and slugs instead of warm wooden floors.
Now with rot and mold instead of crisp white walls.
I'm trapped in a version of you.
A spiral shell, a well, catacombs that exist
Overlapped on top of between adjacent to. A shadow.
I can hear Libertita, the landlord's dog,
Ironically yelping her cries for freedom from her cage.
I can smell chicken in the oven, I can feel bread in the fridge.
I am afraid to leave my bed.
The blankets block out the dark, or
The blackness that's darker than dark,
More viscous too.
Lacking its usual silence, replaced by a choir
Of clicking and humming.
& the sound the slugs make as they traverse the soil at my feet.
I can feel the dark hovering above my eyelids
Threatening to fill my nose with sludge.
I can feel it's pressure deep within my eardrums.

Dear new but old house,
I've built you on my own,
Unwittingly,
As my prison cell.
I've stacked your rubble precisely, as tall as I could, so my escape
Would not be easy or without pain.
I've thought my books into demons.
Swarms of moths & bats that deceive me with
Tales of joy, and morality plays, and resolved melancholia.

Dear old and new house,
I've been stuck inside myself lately.
Chained to my perceived obligation, like
A bike in a chain link fence, whose owner can't
Quite get the combination right
And my parts are being stolen one by one
Until only my frame is left.

I've been ignoring the stairs in the corner.
They spiral to the top of this well...

If you tell me you want me to leave it all...
I will.

"It's not ideal" he said.
I said, "what is ideal then?"
He answered,
"Probably coffee and cigarettes, while the fog rolls in."