Home Sweet Clutter

High summer. We sat poolside at your old friend’s multi-million dollar house overlooking a smoggy city. Inside his AC-chilly walls, I searched for words to praise the decor, couches so plump with designer pillows, I couldn’t sit down; exotic rugs I was afraid to walk on. Mi casa es su casa, your friend declared, but it wasn’t true. Now we’ve come back home. Heaven is the comfortable squalor of this bungalow under cottonwoods shedding brittle leaves; heaps of unfiled poems, our own breath filling our own space.