About a week ago, I was walking past my old house- under the crepe myrtles, frozen nymphs with twisted arms.. I was whispering along the garden wall, sweet nothings to a blasted hull of stone, bare wooden floors and empty rooms now. I passed the door, and noticed it was ajar- propped open with a cinderblock. I moved to enter, but a policewoman blocked my way. She told me an investigation was under way, and that no one was allowed inside. I figured she meant a murder. Eventually she let me in anyway, and I saw- thieves had come, and hacked out all the huge marble fireplaces. All nine of them. In the middle of the afternoon. The fireplaces had been imported from Italy when the house was built, in 1859. Captain William Whann had it built for his daughter, I believe as a wedding present. When I saw the torn brick and mortar, and the gaping holes like missing teeth I sank to the floor and wept. The hearts of the house, excised, raped and sold for profit.

This was one of them, mine. On that mantel lay all the things I held most dear.

Saint Snow White keeps guard.

Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with walls, roofs, and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and bloodstream.”
  -Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

errata:
lepidoptera
lytton strachey
lime blossoms
our lady of shallots
dragon’s tongues
and bladderwrack
divine nonchalance
arms crossed
and I am crossed
with iron and red thread.

And here it’s rain and rain and more rain, and I have this unhappiness settled in my chest like pneumonia-
but it’s nothing I begin to could explain, really.

Melancholy much for the golden light?