I watched my house recede to the invisible
as the water rises and the slow flat boat ferries me away.

My only baggage— the wife in her angels nightgown,
my chihuahua, a revolver loaded with dusty bullets—

all collapsing in the flow, dissolving into rot and mold,
a place not all that comfortable for other people,

a belligerent child evaporating into condemnation,
a concrete overhead blocking my view of heaven.

My archive of creeping shame sheds their existence
until it fits into the reality I see, no longer see.

I can only call this invisible place, this marred space
what it originally was before the water and erasure—

I called it love.
I call it love.