All the Stones That Built Me
In this house are things:
a boy, a lantern,
dead mice, silverware,
running water, screams.
There is filth in this house,
and there is a mop,
and the filth is mop,
and the mop is filth.
And there is me: mop and filth.
This house is a broken Louvre.
In it, I do not have a face,
only a coin ... on the floor ...
In its shimmer—ghosts pushing me off the roof,
daring me to fly.
And the bedroom?
We sleep when we are dead.
The kitchen?
In this house, we break not bread but stones and promises.
How long have you died here?
My mother lived in this house when I lived in her.
She was many a thing:
a girl, a dark room, scurrying mice,
rust, dripping water, silence,
and at the end, the last spoonful of canned beans.
They collect, dancing on the ceiling, the memories.
They cry, they howl,
they put a bounty out on me.
How do I quell the place that built me?
Set fire to all your bones.
There is no dreaming in this house.
I want to dream that I was old.
About this poem
Source: Poetry (April 2022)
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Written on 2022
Submitted by Drone232 on May 31, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:07 min read
- 17 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XXXX ABBCC XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXD DX AX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 966 |
Words | 225 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 5, 5, 5, 8, 2, 2 |
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"All the Stones That Built Me" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/128421/all-the-stones-that-built-me>.
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