Bit by bit

Our flag rolls in the wind with a pleasant fabric clap

in some parallel to a reality that I inhabit

a voice that scampers like a mouse

 through the caverns of this great bungalow  

A reflection of the memories

A whisper to the antiquities of all the people that have lived here

they have been numerous and long

 slipping around in the walls at night searching for the morsels that patience generates

thoughtlessly they exist

as echoes of feelings linger

in the places that they don’t understand

specters of desires that once were held but have dissolved into the landscape

 as the mumbling noise of the street codes for all kinds of sin

and none of us are above it:

she did it in the other room  

while her surrogate children and her husband watched television

presumably to thumb her nose at all the cheap pointlessness

one last time

in the same place, infected with the same disease

hearing the shrieks of the metal makers at night

I wonder if it was the mice in the walls

That coerced her over the edge

The little souls that enter your house at night taking all that you have

Little vermin that rob you, bit by bit