There's something comforting
about returning home
after nights that leave me strung out
and unsure of everything in my life
except the path up the red tile steps
to the front door that creaks when it opens
like an old lover welcoming me home,
with arms of wind-whipped windowpanes
and teeth crumbling like bricks
that were once so strong.

Home is just the three of us now.
My mother, my sister, and me,
but someone once told me that
the strongest foundations are built
in triangles.
Here, all traces of men
have dissipated like smoke through the floorboards,
but if you look closely,
you can still see their footprints that have long since turned to dust,
insignificant and everywhere.
Smell dad's scent of cigarettes
and old books
that still lingers in the back room no matter
how many times mom tries to get rid of it
with sage wrapped fingertips.
We are not girls anymore.
We are women.
We are women, turned warriors
and this house is a battlefield,
a reminder of what remains when the men leave us
sometimes, I here the pipes moan with
the ancient song of being left,
but still carrying on
and there are nights
when our cycles sync up.
Both bodies
and windowpanes
waxing and waning in a dance
as intricate as the phases of the moon,
because everyone I love knows
how to bleed with me.
How to shed
a dying thing from the inside out,
how to make blood a synonym
for baptism,
how to bleed ourselves into a new moon.
And this house is still warm
even though the furnace has been broken
since last winter,
and no one's bothered to fix it,
and the water heater is almost as old as the cat
who's on his last legs too--
it's no coincidence that the only males left in this house are the animals.

I'm leaving for college next year.
And mom's still waiting for her big break
as an actress
and the child support check that's always late
and the furnace still doesn't work.
4 months ago,
a girl with eyes like ocean tides told me
she couldn't love me anymore
and left me standing in the rain.
4 years ago,
a wandering man said he would leave his wife
for my mother
but she's still waiting.
4 days ago,
I heard the pipes whisper to me that we know heartbreak
like nights spent alone,
like a coffee for one,
like a ticking in our veins that says
Keep Living Anyway.

Some would say this house
is falling apart,
beaten down and bruised
like a lover at the end of the line,
but every night she creaks symphonies
and whispers purple midnight stories
with a swollen lip,
and heart still beating like babyfeet on wooden floors.
And she bleeds divinity
through the cracks in the walls
and my mother bleeds strength through the cracks in her palms.

Next year, I'll be gone.
And I wonder
how it will be as I sit
cross legged and lonlier than ever
in a warm dorm room,
with walls that don't have a heartbeat.
And a furnace
that isn't broken.

There's a painting by Botticelli
I've always loved,
showing Venus being born naked
from the ocean and
not fearing the current.
Those around her renounce her body,
scrambling to clothe her,
turn her virginal,
contain the way her eyes cross galaxies,
shine all the way to Pluto.
But she is soft, unwavering,
not noticing the mortals' concern
about her *******
and bare collarbone that could catch water
at its base.

I found you halfway across the world on the steps of the Uffizi
and in the 3 hours it took you
to show me some of the best art on earth,
I was transfixed only
on the orbits of planets in your eyes.
Shortly before the sun set,
you took me through the secret corridor
Cosimo de' Medici built to walk across the
rooftops of the city
where you kissed me but
told me you didn't believe in love,
that all you needed was art,
and Michelangelo,
and in that moment
I saw Venus in your collarbone.
Saw a shell under your feet,
saw the universe in the way your freckles connected,
saw how you immortalize yourself
among the rest of the art in Florence
so no human can bring you down to earth,
can make your heart stop,
show you what it's like to cross timezones
with a single touch.
And here I am,
wanting to be your Botticelli,
to paint the uneven ***** of your shoulders,
the crookedness of your right ankle,
your fear of exposing yourself to someone
who could love you.
It must be lonely out there, Venus,
on your little fishing boat by the sea.

Botticelli's painting was found
long after his death,
laid into the floor of
an abandoned villa in the south of Tuscany.
Venus looking lost and mortal
between cracked paint and chipping walls,
like the way you hide between
the dusty statues of the dead statesmen and fading portraits
long after the museum closes,
just you with only history to hold.
You want to believe in love
as past-tense,
like you've lost faith in present participles and the fact
that art is still being made,
and people are running barefoot into future conjugations
together.

Don't come back to land, Venus. Vanessa.
I won't be here waiting with a towel
or an art critic
or a spaceship.
But maybe,
just make a little room for me on your shell
under the sun,
atop steady waves or Florentine rooftops.
Throw the map overboard.
Let's forget the shore.

And Michelangelo and the rest of them
will smile as they see us off.