dehumidifier 

in the mountain house
i learned how to talk to centipedes.
put my ear to the wooden floor
& heard them in the basement 
summoning angels. sometimes 
i miss my old solitude there.
i felt all my seams. snipped them
when i could & watched beetles spill
from my guts. i loved to stay up late
putting on makeup in the smudged mirror.
pretty little prophet in a silk robe.
the chaos of becoming an anchor.
a place for god to bend down
& send pigeons. in the little library box
across the street, i watched the bugs go
to hold their midnight masses. 
a chapel is a place you go to lose a piece
of your body. i thought i needed
to rid the house of clouds so i bought
a dehumidifier. let it drink the sky.
fill its belly with sweat each day.
instead of helping though,
it draw the centipedes in. they congregated.
they said, "this is my new religion."
swarms beneath the tank. i told them,
"i am throwing this all
down the drain." they did not listen.
traveled from far & wide in search 
of a severed creek. we are all just looking
for water. i had to throw the machine away
but even after they kept coming.
i shouted at them, "this is not a lake."
but it was. it was always a lake.
fish skeletons in the air. all the legs
in the whole world, treading water.
the bottom not a question
of how deep but how long
you can last without using your teeth.
my words turned inside out.
there were days i could not speak
to anyone but the bugs. tuning fork tongue.
a ring of bodies where the machine was.