4590 St. Denis

Magical store full of cupboards.
Go back there when next you're
feeling lost,
to lose yourself
in the labyrinthine folds,
wood upon wood
until, reaching the heart,
you stop.

Until reaching the centre,
all doors open into
nothingness
but grain and a greater or lesser coating of dust,
and packets of silicone gel
in forgotten corners.

All doors open into
everything
a broken heart desires:
nooks, irredundent spaces,
and accessory
crannies in which to place your sadness,
a string of red stone beads,
in the back.

Where few will seek is safest.

Until reaching the heart
of this maze,
so much larger within
(Your home, my love, was larger
within until it shrank)
than without,
all paths call onward
in any and no direction,
with ever more interiors to
expose to your wandering eyes.
Your blind fingers guide
you over skins soft as inner bark
laid bare to the voices
of the wood, of the skinned and striated wood.

Until, reaching the centre
(There is no centre;
the centres
travel with us unseen),*
you stop.

At the heart
of the maze is a monster,
not toothsome nor horned,
but simply
dormant,
vacant,
void,
and a perfect fit for your heart.


*Margaret Atwood, 'A Place: Fragments,' in The Circle Game (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1966), 75.