The poem - The White Cube

The poem - The White Cube

The House, The Garden, The Cube

The two became four, became a house,

became inheritance, became clutter,

became life stacked into possessions,

became everything.

Piles on piles on piles —

the children grew tired of the weight

and left,

but the couple stayed,

moving around the piles

as they spilled into the garden.

They remembered the shed.

They emptied it, painted it white,

made a cube, a space,

an imagination station.

Two chairs, two cups, two plates,

one bed, one fire —

we could be anywhere in the world,

they said,

and for a while, they were.

But the house kept spilling,

the garden kept growing,

thorns and thistles swallowing the cube

until neighbours forgot

the two who still lived there.

They sat warm toed by the fire,

lost in dreams,

forgetting to drink, forgetting to eat,

aging together in their white walled anywhere.

The mansion sagged under its own history,

the garden covered the house,

covered the cube,

covered the two of them —

rich with possessions,

full to the brim with a life kept,

stacked, saved, inherited.

They died in the empty cube,

the cube of just their memories,

their last breath taken

in the stillness

of a space big enough

to breathe in.