Green Girl House

By Miranda Fay

somehow something glimmers

somehow, someone listens

now safe to eat a meal

in the tender quiet kitchen

green girl house

it escapes me

the look of things lately

and why your floors heal my feet

lurking old farm town 

decaying corn fields

cold vacant grown-up stares 

a girl with too much to feel

my sad girl aesthetic

was made entirely for you

although you’ll never get it

even after i screamed at you

all these stupid roads

lead to one stupid white house

i stood here on my toes

and cried my lungs out

matriarchal tendencies

parallel lines in a blue sea

my anger and my fury

i stay quiet, because he asked me

oh green girl house

i can’t escape myself

i throw away the pieces

but time restocks the shelf

my anger and my fury

couldn’t kill a garden snake

for what it’s worth, i’m breathing now

but i still live in your mistakes

butterfly beating chest 

and my butterfly covered room

the colors swirl into my deepest dreams

of white house ache and gloom

oh green girl house

why have you called me here?

i bought tulips wrapped in plastic

as a self-love souvenir 

mother, father 

as your gentrified dearest daughter

could you not be softer

when i cried to you?

old white house

with walls that know everything

witness my best breath work 

as i adapt to vocal cues

green girl house

a place i will someday lose

in a million lifetimes i would fight 

for a minute more or two

green girl house

forever silent your walls

no other place i’ve missed

so much, this much, at all