Cracks Papered Over – a poem.

A house.

Four walls, a roof. A container.

It keeps things in, lets little out,

not even hope.

Feelings wither, unreciprocated,

damaged, both,

apart together.

Dreams die, strangulated,

unarticulated,

in these silent rooms.

Side by side, they sit and hide

from each other,

unlike lovers.

There, in that house,

they see only something neat,

painted, decorated,

cracks papered over.

They do not see themselves.

They have too different

visions of love.

Perhaps nothing

is what they wish to see.

That place is a building,

peopled, but not lived in.

That is a house.

That is not

a home.