A movable beast

We came with boxes which we set
down like cornerstones, stacked
up like shaky spinal columns
we draped our new life over.
In fine point marker, marked their contents, mapped fresh configurations, and
stuffed them full of dusty confessions which we forgot
and were surprised to rediscover:
This is the old Prom photo that always falls out of its frame;
This is the drawing you made your first year in Savannah;
This is the adolescent love letter
I don’t want to remember.
We sealed everything up in corrugated paper coffins.

Every armful we carried in
revealed more of us in black-ink increments:
This box marked, “paperback books.”
This one, “dishes.”
This one, “green glass.”
This one reads simply, “old shit.”
A reconstructed, movable life, traveling blocks, removed and placed
in dark corners,
assembled and lined up along
blank walls.
A deconstructed home.

A week later, the boxes were gone, broke open and
discarded like shells and
their insides
displayed, splayed, spilled
everywhere within the new
four walls we’d left the old four walls
for.
We’d cracked our lives open and we
spilled out.

Two weeks later, we haunt this new space.
We’ve settled into it among the mirrors, the paintings, the books, the green glass,
and even the old shit —
things wrapped ceremoniously in newspaper,
composite sketches of ourselves which in boxes I thought said much:
these things say very little.
And we ourselves are little more than empty boxes:
mobile facsimiles;
drawn-on,
taped-up and interchangeable
identities.
We drink wine,
laugh, and make love.
You put your lips on mine and we say we’re different.

Are we so different?