Here’s the image
I feared would outlast me: the wrong house
Hidden behind the right door,
Theseus grinning from the reconstructed rafters.
This is how they built
It, the roof a person
Slumping further than they should, the slate miraculously
Irreplaceable. Such care they took with the reconstruction:
Floors weathered by younger feet,
The last unrepeatable snowflake
Carved to resemble glass, my bones pieced into a
Better person. The centerpiece: an immaculate
Quilt draped over legs stronger
Than I ever taught them to be. So read
The lengthy provenance, where they indulge
In stories that skin
Wouldn’t dare claim. Of course
The seasons change what living
could not, of course the unwitting ghost
Lies through her teeth.
Here I compose and decompose the body;
If the weeds steal it back, leave it unarranged.
Let vines climb and die in rain-spots and sun-spots,
End the reinvention of the form
Our cells fought to shape.
So suffer the necessary crookedness,
Leave me
As myself.