The wind tries every latch, each seam, but
it’s the knuckle-cracking record-breaking cold
whose fists pound hourly the walls, the roof,
cop-heavy menace, tree-fall percussive,
making the house itself a booming bass drum
or splintering ax fall or too-close shotgun blast—
anything but a place you'd want to rest your head.
No use trying to bar the door: the cold knocks
from deep already inside, beneath the stain,
in the tightest betweens, down in the grain
where some breath of moisture kept its own counsel
for as long as it could before it finally froze and fractured,
abruptly unloading its long-kept secret, releasing
in a compulsive shout what was once unspeakable.
All day and into evening the house tries to undo itself
like this, in some weird winter molt—clapboards and nails
popping in a deconstruction zone of home-unmaking,
house un-warming—and so tonight we'll play at sleep,
pray we'll wake to the still-ticking of the faucets
we left open to slow drip, to prevent the pipes
from joining the home’s involuntary revolt against itself.
Liz Ahl is the author of A Case for Solace (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022) and Beating the Bounds (Hobblebush Books, 2016), as well as several chapbooks. She lives in New Hampshire.