#06-690

I love the fact that we decorate our homes.

Some for themselves others for others

I imagine it extends our souls and emanates our being.

Maybe that’s why I’ve begun to notice how

you like to shift the furniture around a lot

you get your inspiration from the channels 

you browse on the daily on the TV hanging on the wall

installed two inches too high off your eye level

and so sofas were bought with this in mind

walls

as pale as could be

you said it’s easier to complement

I was unsure 

if you meant to match colour or life

and speaking of colour the yellow placemats 

do little to save the bland Corelles 

monkeys never look good hugging ash drapes

and ashtrays do not belong indoors but then again

you’ve always had an uninspired eye for decoration.

And I know that because

just like how you decorate our home

I want to decorate you

or redecorate us and this deafening silence we share

with garden-plucked sunflowers or artificial lilies

either is fine

because they both breathe the words our lips struggle

with that I imagine my ears would tingle to

perhaps I could chisel away at my dignity

and carve a relationship out of this limestone floor

even vacuum the hurt from under the rug or tend to

the wounds on my cupboard door but I do not

and like you

I refuse to part my lips how 

they are stubbornly sealed to conceal precious

lines like a book unwilling to crack its spine

like you

I leave the room when its oxygen is halved

fitting how our bedrooms maintain a safe distance

enough to limit interaction I really am trying to

like you

but I am under no guise that beneath these magnolia walls

before these coats of Nippon were smeared in 

permanence prior to our lodging in this wannabe Hilton

who was to tell if things were going to be different if

I  — decorated our home

if it's even going to be furnished at all.