opening

each night when my sleep reaches deep
creeping into the crevices of dreams unknown kingdom
i see a house among the pines

in these haunting dreams i appear as a child

among the pines i find a cabin i have seen in a film
which i vaguely recall from a childhood screening.

                                                                              outside

wind violently howls through the tall trees
rustling the leaves
a torn satin scarf hangs
without moving 

gates of sharpened bamboo surround the grounds
where the cabin stands eerily alone

a window is smashed from the inside
& out flies a crow.

                                                                              interlude

// ENTERING //
crawling underneath the spiky bamboo fence
& through the hole in the window.

                                                                              inside

the walls are smeared with thick black tar
& covered in fragments of shattered mirrors

the floors are flooded with a sticky substance
seeping into creaking wooden floorboards 

shelves are stacked with limb-shaped porcelain pieces
carved ivory tusks & stuffed forest animals

the lights and lamps have all been smashed
& four inch candles held upright in their own wax
burn flickering 
reflecting off of the black smeared walls. 

                                                                          event

opening a wooden door
to find a bed with frilled sheets
filled with shards of mirror glass 
only to wake a frail blond teenage girl
covered in the tar and crow feathers
who charges at me
holding a piece of the sharp mirror 

swiftly moving to the side she stumbles
running into a cabinet where the candles burn
knocking them over onto the sticky floor

flames...

we are both trapped inside.

                                                                              closing

the cabin burns
with flames rising
through the open space which was the roof
as the four walls fall into a heap of ash

from the pine forest
a man and a woman
both dressed as if from another era
:: man wearing a cap
woman covered in a headscarf
~ faintly resembling my father and my mother
(what i remember of their faces)

they stand watching the fire.