Simple

He and she lived a simple life of years

in a house with shuttered windows

and a garden of roses by the back door.

But she was I and he was you and years were only

things that didn’t happen and things that did.

And the house was a palace and a prison

and an empty box, and it was all so complicated.

The windows were weary eyes that always

watched, and the door, the door was the keeper,

the releaser, the rectangle of know; behind there,

questions were born. And yellow roses grew out back,

but so did thorns, and we never knew which we would

collect.  Strings of together pulling, binds of tight,

and then invisible hands to reach down

and sweep away our tangled life.