[...And the little white dove made with love, made with love, made with glue and a glove and some pliers...]

Build me a house.

Build me; a house.

Build. Me; a house.

[ The newness of me ]

My loss was like the digging of a hole. A grave, dug from the soil that sustained me. Though somehow, from the loss of soil and the killing of trees, trampling over underbush and burrowing deeper, deeper and deeper... Though I've drowned in dirt and been buried in fog, I awake in the clearness of dawn and see: a foundation has been built. 

Find the posts. Build the walls, the windows and the doors. Build the roofs and the bannisters, boards and billowing beams, undulating through rooms of wood, plaster and stone. The panes of glass bordered in black, facing the east, feeling the first of mornings to come.

Build it: Build me. Newly born, barely formed, though deeper than before. Stronger than the gripping onto soil, onto leaves, breakable branches, facing night skies naked, pinned by bodies, pinned by nothing.

Weave me tapestries, set to walls, hiding secrets, telling stories. Bring me my fire, harvest me my ashes (to wash me down in soap). 

To be. To be me. Built of me, upon my loss.

The doors. They will be yours.

The interior of me, open to you...

 Always.

Has every artist a muse? Every Orpheus a Eurydice?

"Bury me in fire. And I'm gonna phoenix. I'm gonna phoenix."

Every phoenix has its fire.

...

To my gift from God - my sun - my fire,

When my house is fully formed - will you walk through my doors?

No longer inchoate nor inordinately infirm - will you feel free enough to roam my halls?

You saw me debilitated, decrepit and disabled. Ailing, feeble and weak. Groping through sand dunes, salt flats ("picking through your pocket linings"). I shot you with such insult. Injured you with such blindness. Begged you with such reckless indigence. 

How can I - could I - ever forgive myself?

I can't.

I don't. 

All I can do is build my house (upon the ashes of that crude and embryonic me).

And hope.

(What has happened cannot be undone. But new memories can be built. New battles can be won. With time, the newness of me can repair us, until soon we'll barely remember we ever were broken. Soon. [Not yet, though ready to wait patiently as I build, as you wander and unfurl] And hope will be my impetus.)

Love.