The Hymn Inside Us
Cameron Mathews
The four rooms held more than people.
Each box a cavity in the mouth of the house.
Mother lies like death now,
The cist that flaws and decays
In the stomach
Of our house.
Father never sleeps,
His skin woven into cushions
Leaving ache like footprints.
A comb over scalp
With kiss like bruise patterns
Shaping the skull.
Sister remained a beautiful mute,
Carving poetry inside herself
So deep within her walls,
Away from home.
I, like a porcelain jar of house flies,
Center myself in the hollow hallways.
The hum of wings binds the weathered wood
To the pores of my body.
I want you to sing to me,
Rape back the hymns into these veins.
I need to feel what home holds.
Cut me open like a letter
And seed me across the floor.
Mother, die as to feel something.
Father, embrace me like a child again.
Sister, compose your opera in these windows,
Let the sun and God see this is a place.
Let this house pour like gasoline,
Char up the hate like sandpaper,
And make these cavities into rooms
Called home again.
As of May 2004, Cameron was a senior at the University of Northern Colorado earning a Bachelor of Arts & Sciences Degree in Journalism/Mass Communication. His poetry has appeared in The Crucible.
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