Over the years, in stillness,
I read ever-diminishing fragments by flashlight,
breathe through broken windows.

From the roof, a wind-dropped seed
vigorous as cancer grows through the ceiling,
threatens me with tangling roots that find no earth.

Stalactites, dirty yellow insulation and ice,
stab at me as I skirt the perimeter, wake the floor’s cave-in,
remember its middle age, look down into the oubliette.

Carpets and wallpaper merge into brown.
Doors sag onto ceiling-filled halls.
Through shattered glass, darkness seeps in like miasma
from an overturned tanker truck onto a sleeping town,

but a soul clings to its body,
makes deals with sluggish heart, crippled limbs,
a baby who lingers overdue.in a swollen, eclamptic mother,
unknowingly content with familiar oxygen, drops of blood.

Slow collapse becomes, if not dear, at least familiar.

You will not have back the uncrippled claw.