To Find Home

The trick, I am told by a man clad
in khaki armor, is to search for points of departure

and arrival. The exterminators have been around twice
this week, and the back porch has just stopped

reeking of pesticide, the unfinished wood
beneath the floorboards' peeling paint

soaking in the scent. The winter months expanded
the water in everything––the house groaned bloated,

unhappy to have taken in so much––and we, too,
grew beyond our patient domesticity, flaking off

in brittle sheets. After the eruption
of summer, everything emerges unsteadily. Even the wasps

wander the windowsills, the sidewalk cratered
with abandoned anthills. The exterminator tells me

it takes the lazy not-looking of an optical illusion to see
where the trouble originates. On this first

ninety-degree day of summer, a nail swelled out
of place catches between my toes, and the corpse

of the overstuffed couch that breaks my fall
buzzes angrily from inside.

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