i am driving to a friends house down madison / and the back of my car is empty / i wonder if there's truth to the myth of a home / if it's all just pretend / laying barbies out and creating the things you think you should want / breakfast in a kitchen nook / overflowing flower beds / a body warming you up / and that that body / always will 

hold the wheel while i take my sweater off / im so much more able with four hands / my legs are indented with rope lines from the hammock / by the lake where the fish's little mouth’s made big o’s in the water / where i waded in and caught it by my pinky finger / swallowed it whole down the slipperiness of my throat / where i heard it swimming in my belly 

from a window inside a kitchen wallpapered with ducks / we watch the leaves shake off the rain like a dog / i say / i like the way you kissed me goodnight / nervous, honest, upside down dripping wet / sarcophagus cocoons suspended in / a swinging net / by the lake with the mosquitoes that always come for your ankles and never mine / bloods too sweet 

there are all these slivers of living in the bigger thing we call life / when big jeans died and you were held on your knees by your neighbor as the sobs shook out of you / when you quit therapy because you were better now / when you tried to rescind your quitting because you actually weren’t all that better but he said / too late / your spot was already filled / how you went to the video store once a week to buy a movie to watch alone / until you couldn’t / because you fucked the video store guy / unable to even complain to your therapist ab it / because he’d gotten busy screwing someone else's mind 

these messy bits that glow / that compile moments into reels / slivers of life coming back / mined into / a slowness that creeps / into a compository of flesh / memories / the mundanity of a beautiful life / i’d hedge a million bets on those slivers / even if it's all pretend / so your cat committed suicide? / so your best friends getting married? / so he doesn’t love you back? / so he changed his mind a few years later? / so a life full of things 

i am driving to a friends house down madison / and one day i will have kids in the back / and i am sure i will wonder about the myth of a home / and hopefully / by then / i’ll know the way back