I.
A dog the size of weather fills the yard.
Its breathing lifts the house like tidal wood.
The children hover, unadmitted, barred
by what was set in place before it stood.
At night it swells—black lung, black engine—draws
the dark inside itself, then gives it back.
Its shoulders grind the fence. Its jaw withdraws
no answer from the walls it leans to crack.
Warm breath invades the attic, fogs the beams.
The ceiling bows. Teeth worry through the sheet.
The lamps go dim. The windows lose their seams
as lips slide down them, sealing up the street.
The house holds still. The dog completes its span.
The night has found a body shaped like man.

II.
A plank lies set between the attic beams,
a narrow bridge above the living room.
Your father builds it. Women come by morning,
then one by one withdraw in turn by noon,
the ladder folding neatly in the wall.
One night his leg bursts through the ceiling’s skin—
a sudden limb, a snake, a breach, a fall—
then slips back up, obedient to pain.
Your mother murmurs in the bedroom
with a man whose voice is spare and thin.
A bruise appears, that violet bloom,
on your father’s thigh, unfolding under skin.
The house exhales. The body does not sleep.
What breaks the skin has other doors to keep.