Apartment 2B

I don't even remember the moment when I wrote the following poem.  I think, October.  I was in Torino, staying with my SO's family.  They had just moved into their apartment, were still in the process of arranging and rearranging.

In my four days there, half my time was spent in and out of decor stores.  Zara Home, numbers of times a day.  Months later, the cashier still remembered me, though language had separated us from ever saying a word beyond Ciao.

I was struck, in the first days of the house, by its lack.  Everything necessary was there, but nothing else.  It was skeletal and because of this it was stunning.

Apartment 2B
It was the opposite of a haunted house.  Pristine perfection.
Untouched ivory, still attached to the skull of a raging elephant.
Full of the could bes, the ghost of infinite possibilities and lives to be lived.
Of the newness of infants and the aging of a woman alone at the end.

She entered the house as a stranger, when it was becoming new again,
erasing whatever past it once had, and rewriting itself as crystal.
The dust of tears grinding themselves into polished marble.
The taupe walls coloring to frost, then disappearing into clarity.

She returned in its infancy, still tempestuous waves of change and decision,
everything done but nothing quite finished.
That's how it stayed, an ever changing tidal pool,
welcoming the sandpiper and jellyfish alike.