She listened with one eye. A comic verse of irregular measure. The thermostat set to fifty-four degrees. I don’t see a home, I see a butcher shop. I see naked rooms without furniture. Bathroom floor with bibles for tiles. A kitchen with last year’s calendar, colanders for draining all that is sacred, all that is holy, and cookie cutters shaped like faces of villains we once we’ve been to each other. I see bodies hanging among the copper pots. Every knife serrated, every drawer filled with more drawers. O the earth’s buttery crust. O the shocking whiteness of blood. We communicate through walls, carve blessed tautologies into each other’s skin, we speak a code embedded in undulating bed sheets. Your kisses, your touch, you core me like an apple swollen with the juice of a thousand orchards.