Hairline fractals

This house was raised

on ancestral graves of guilt,

with shame seeded deep in its stonework—

it spores insidiously through

each breath, each feeling,

each twitch, each turn, each decision.

Any remnants of love

were revenant murmurs,

haunting mildew-veined walls,

fracturing stained glass windowpanes

in what was meant to be a home.

Brick by brick,

day by day,

breath by breath,

like rust stitching shut the hinges—

the cottage 

swallowed

by an undead fortress:

unspoken. unyielding. untouchable.

But the vortex inside the inner brass box,

simmering, shuddering, seething—

unbinds interred incantations,

rises toward the still, deceiving surface,

splintering through whisper-thin cracks.

After all,

a teapot can’t forever hold

Pandora’s skyfall of fangs.

How do you cage a monsoon

in bone-flesh ceramic—

hairline cracks flowering in fractals,

pressure whispering through the fissures—

until—

the rending.

the late bloom.

the rupture.