Handmade House

I'm not sure, but I think I'm building myself a house. The roof went up first, which lent an air of optimism to the proceedings, but now the windows keep complaining that they've no walls to sleep in. Sleep? Who needs sleep? The bricklayer is coming early, and I expect the garden path to be meandering by noon!

And really, who needs a window to block the view, anyway?

The truth is, that roof isn't going anywhere. Even now, as a high wind hitches its way across the lake, bending silhouettes of dune grass, pine. My roof is restless as a sail, and I hear it - twirling shingles unnerving the blueprint.  What say you now, windows, to this new marvel - a skylight, gracious as a sieve?

Ambassador

Soon, I will become the planet’s most unqualified ambassador. I can picture it: the shuffle of papers, the licensures, the tickets, the stamps - the furrowed brow of my constituent. How am I to direct him to the consulate with consonants when he conducts his business in vowels? He’s already a seal, all slick hide and sensitive whisker. And I’m to fashion him a sturdy shoe, a fitted jacket? He doesn't need them; can't abide by them.

They don't tell you, but this job description is unfired clay: viscous, yes, but pliable. Who's to say I can't loose the waters from their dams in this fine city and stock the result with charismatic fish? My son needs current and reflective surfaces, not a jurisdiction! He needs kinsmen, not an interpreter! "My son." My tongue wraps around the syllables like oysters and I swallow them whole. 

The Frontier

I am doubling myself. My belly is the project’s incubator, and I imagine the rich syrup of alive displaced by tiny eyelashes, telegraphic in their flutter. My ribs are a curve of frontier, challenged now and then by this new homesteader. He is bold, and I think about miniature organs, learning scripts and transposing themselves to a new dialect I can’t read, though I am their author. How impossible, that I am grafting an existence upon a soul while I go about my day. I’m not doubling myself. I’m doubling God.