Bento
after Christopher Middleton
To lift the roof off a doll’s house
To stuff each room with foodstuffs
To have a place for everything
To have everything in place
To pace each room on wooden stilts
To browse the house like a thief
To steal your way into the bedroom
To ponder what to pilfer first
To strip the bed of dirty sheets
To keep coming back for more
To dip the baby in the bathwater
To leave towels on the floor
To lift timber limbs to lips
To stuff your mouth with foodstuffs
To place everything you have
Inside your picket fence
(from Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything, New Rivers Press 2019)