Dan Enache Poet Free verse

The Stranger Who Builds a House from Bones

The Stranger Who Builds a House from Bones

I think it's better to be a stranger in a foreign country than a stranger at home,
and like all those who move through worlds I built myself a house from dreams,
I painted the walls with the blood I squeezed from my pulsing heart,
I sewed the pillows with the finest textiles: pain and my veins as thread.

I decorated the walls with my bones that shine like white constellations,
and I gave up my spine as payment for the unseen workers,
to carry the heavy furniture of my luggage full of phosphorescent memories,
after all the hard work I stepped back to look at what I'd created.

I thought: it's enough now you'll finally be at home in your sanctuary,
and I was, for some magical time when the moon fell through bone windows,
then the house transformed into a grotto that no longer welcomed me warmly,
I tried to enter but they told me to take off my boots full of cosmic mud.

So I did and I entered and took off my coat and heavy emotions,
I tried to hang them but they stopped me saying sadness stays outside,
so I went out and tore off my flesh that was too much for them,
when I was called for dinner I was told to wash my hands but the water burned.

The water fell like acid and my bones melted into stardust,
I sat at the table and proceeded to talk about my long day,
but I was told it's impolite to talk so much about yourself,
so I swallowed my words that remained stuck in my constricted throat.

Since then I only speak in unfinished sentences that get lost in the air,
because there's always that voice reminding me nobody wants to hear,
nobody is interested in what I have to say or my old stories,
but even though this sovereignty slowly dismembers me into fragments.

I think maybe it's better this way at least calamity can't find me here,
and I think I always knew what I had to do to be welcomed,
but the signs were covered with glowing green moss in the evening light,
I always knew I had to leave pieces of myself like leaves in autumn.

Leaves know they must fall when winter falls upon them like snow,
but at least calamity can't find me here in my crystal house,
even though I myself have become an unfinished sentence floating in space,
a half-thought something you forget to remember footsteps in white snow.

Just parts of a whole that used to be complete and entire,
I can no longer write without a prompt my hands tremble like leaves in wind,
my soul falls silent before the blank pages that stare at me empty,
it's so difficult to feel anything in my colorless present situation.

It's as if I've become a substance that requires a magical chemical catalyst,
to function but I yearn to feel everything fully like I used to,
but I no longer feel anyway not completely just a small part of what was before,
and I can't even mourn what I've become because my heart has dulled.

It's dulled to the point where it bleeds a faded shade of pale red,
I'm a stranger in my house which is the foreign country where I don't truly belong,
I built a tomb from my bones that sing old sad songs,
and now I live outside in the house that rejects me with translucent ice hands.

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