If someone really wants to get inside your house, they will. I heard that on a cop show once. Just boxes of wood and glass to let the light in. Flimsy locks, open windows. Screens. I think of the other things that work their way inside: dirt, that mug that I gave away recently, the one I brought back all the way from the UK, leaves, bits of plastic, your pajama bottoms, wrappers, an elbow brace, wasps, the candle that smelled like pine, your pants on the couch, the best intentions. Remember the funny tee shirt, the hole filled behind the door, the trips to recycling. I read that if you want to manifest the thing, you already have to be the thing. I laugh at how impossible that feels and sell the garlic press you left here, sip the untasted beer, delete the techno music link to the tv, trash the toothbrush, use the work gloves. What does the word bleeding mean to you? What is cut into a million pieces. Items sit on dusty surfaces, always waiting in the corner of the garage, they breathe, they tremble, slither in and out from under the door, knock for me, I cannot list all of the items fast enough: the saw, the clippers, the tool kit, the you that I am starting to forget, the you isn’t you, that freezing night we slept with the windows open.

Contributor Bio:

J. MacBain-Stephens (she/her) went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, “Pool Parties” is now available from Unsolicited Press. She is the author of fifteen poetry chapbooks. Some of her work appears in The Pinch, South Broadway Ghost Society, Cleaver, Zone 3, Slant, Yalobusha Review, and Grist. Find her online at http://jennifermacbainstephens.com/