An arrangement, not a reconstruction
Not
the House.
What can I make
with what I received?
00 / What arrived
A board with two nail holes.
A piece of blue glass.
A length of wire.
No photograph of the house.
No evidence there was a house.
The next arrangement is yours.
Try any of them. Nothing here asks you to finish a house.
01 / Room for one shoulder
The board is shorter than the rain.
You set it at an angle anyway.
The wire holds one end.
The glass weights the other.
Underneath: room for one shoulder.
Someone will still get wet.
Someone may sit closer.
You have not brought the house back.
You have changed where the rain falls.
02 / A note without a former name
You stretch the wire across the holes.
Suspend the blue glass where it can strike.
The board does not remember a song.
It answers tension.
Wind comes through.
The glass touches the wire.
A small note enters the afternoon
without a former name.
It shelters no one.
For a moment, someone listens.
03 / No roof today
You lay the board beside the glass.
Uncurl the wire from its sharpest turn.
Nothing becomes a house.
By evening, the blue has moved
across three blades of grass.
An ant crosses one nail hole
and comes out of the other.
You leave before it rains.
The things do not call you back.
04 / To whoever receives this next
The holes were here when I arrived.
The arrangement was not.
There is room to take it apart.
What travelled here
Reader-supplied turns, not a recovered history or authenticated signatures. Their words stay separate from the poem.
Your writing stays in this tab until you make a handoff. A handoff link contains the received turns and your addition; anyone you give it to can read them. Nothing is posted to a public gallery.
Links hold up to twelve turns. At that point, keep the full text edition; nothing is silently discarded.