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And I, a head full of bricks, swung thoughtless / around the top post, through the gap, crashed / through the surface of that great, glass, perpendicular sea.
The doorframe, faded custardy paint,
held a tall frosted glass pane
and divided the hall from the kitchen.
There were waves in it, flowing left-right
and you could run your tongue over
the hard crests and into the
rough dips between. It tasted of water
and there could be apple pie beyond it. There
could be an argument about bedtime.
There could be an argument.
One day there was a note, that my mother picked up
before walking up the stairs,
bannister infilled with cheap hardboard,
glossed seventies beige by my dad,
and told me, as I clicked a window into place,
expecting surprise, that he was gone.
I politely pretended to cry
and returned to my lego house
After weeks of tears and singles nights;
new bannisters were needed, so for a while
we had stairs with no edge. One newell post
alone at the bottom; another at the top.
And I, a head full of bricks, swung thoughtless
around the top post, through the gap, crashed
through the surface of that great, glass, perpendicular sea.
Jerked into reality, my screams were bloody, indecorous,
a broken red and blue wall in my hand
and a shoe pitched onto the cooker,
But I was not following a line of tragedy;
I was unscratched and the house easily rebuilt. Soon
I could sit again on the stairs with it on my knees,
as my new dad beneath held the door as they fitted
new glass, identical to the last,
every bit as lickable.
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