soapbubbles by sean s

after "Sarah", published in the Winter 2008 issue of Tin House

You were the tattoo of my house before you stood in my house.
- Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, "Sarah"

I was the skin of my house before

the tattoo was drawn.
My house was shallower than a tattoo,
floating bubblelike in bursting bodies,

bodies bursting from the depleted sighs

inside the floating skin.
Before you arrived, houses floated through me

like windows, through the window of me,
I was remembering the nerve etching of the
tattoo on glass before the house had arrived,
floating transparently over our heads, one

corner glinting in the sun like a needle.