I, too, dwell

by Marnie Ritchie

the barn’s second story has a metal fence around a square hole at the center there is no way to get in or out no one to bother me or come find me perhaps I like it that way perhaps there I make a home and begin to hunger and want a rich wooden board with a spread of winter pears and marzipan a woman with a body like mine skinny perky able to touch herself like me and a bath drawn with bubbles and zested with lemon perhaps a lover down there for four hours some absurd egotistical show that no one asked for and still the bones of a rapist dried out in the sun and crushed into a powder to make pancakes and served with fresh-squeezed orange juice perhaps squirrel friends to drop off pinecones and other treasures and ask me to pinch their cheeks the rotted roof begins to smell like crab apples three days after falling perhaps this is no place to make a home to dwell even for one night