Pompeian House

Pompeian House

You said once you wanted a Pompeian house,

all atrium and vestibulum,

all colours so vivid

they take their fists to time.

But what does it matter?

No one paints to survive

that kind of ruin.

You tell me things that happened to you

like they’re from someone else’s life;

like you could deny the brambles,

as if the flesh forgot.

As if you might find home

in every outstretched hand,

in boys who hid their cruelty

where daylight didn’t remember.

But you did.

You remembered the way

dirt remembers a rainless season;

something ruthless about you cutting

through life on the smoke of those

who razed you.

I saw the smoke

on the bus that day,

how it sealed you into the morning

and left only fragments —

an arched brow, a pale wrist,

your laugh with that prefix of hesitance.

One day archaeologists will dig up

our things and put them in museums,

and write articles, and give lectures,

and theorise about you

and your Pompeian house.

Pompeian House was first published in The Three Lamps, Issue 2, 2018

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