The House at the End of The Street
by Elizabeth Austin

The walls fold over the rooms, leaning
as though on the back-end of a sigh.
Rain water bubbles through fissures,
streaming over tea cups stacked
higher than my eyes, bending like pipes,
their saucers filling, spilling over.
 
Rafters groan from the weight
of caterpillar nests, drooping soggy
and globular, moaning for the floor.
The black larvae churn, despairing,
knowing only of the light, yet still seeking.
 
Blind and flightless, she’s upstairs now,
thumping and howling, walking barefoot
over the thick glass of shattered jars.
The doors have swollen in their jambs.
Like shaking salt from the sea, I pull her
beneath the window’s rotting arch.
 
We wait, shivering in the damp.
The sound of my nightmares,
a wail tearing through clear night.
Though we have no wings,
we teach ourselves to fly.
 
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Elizabeth Austin is a poet, photographer, visual artist, and single mum. She is currently a graduate student in Creative Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in the Schuylkill Valley Journal, See Spot Run, and Driftwood Press. She was recently featured in a collaborative exhibit with photographer Sarah Jane Sanders at the Norton Center for the Arts. She was first runner up for Bucks County Poet Laureate 2014. Follow her on Instagram: @elizabethbeingqueen, or visit her website for more of her work. She currently lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.