I Refuse The Frame

I will not discuss her.

Not the arrangement,
not the emergency lighting
not the leak in the ceiling everybody keeps calling weather,
not the way some people show up in life
with a plastic smile and a crowbar
and call that love.

To discuss her at all
I would have to accept the frame.

I would have to stand in the gallery
where somebody hung mildew beside a mural
and asked me to keep an open mind.
I would have to walk through a half-built house,
ankle-deep in floodwater,
and compliment the architecture.

No.

I know a house from a hazard.

I know the difference
between a porch light and a siren,
between a partner
and bad wiring behind a fresh coat of paint,
between devotion
and somebody picking copper from the walls.
I know the difference
between being chosen
and being used slowly, beautifully,
with just enough ceremony
to make the theft look holy.

That is what makes me dangerous here.
Not jealousy.
Not bitterness.
Only sight.

I have looked at a person
with poems still warm in her hands,
half a song caught in her throat,
blueprints folded in the back pocket of her mind,
studying coding with sawdust still living under her nails,
and thought:

there you are.

The kind of person
who could frame a wall straight,
hang the door true,
sand the splinters smooth,
then stand in the kitchen humming to herself,
like tenderness is just another building material.

The kind of person
who wants babies and millions,
with the same bright, impossible sincerity,
like both are just synonyms for “home”

Who collects strange little facts
like shiny screws in a coffee can,
who laughs like some part of her
is still 8-years-old and sun wild,
still grass-stained in the soul,
and convinced wonder
is a form of intelligence.

The kind of person
who can make shelter feel romantic,
who can turn bare studs into sanctuary,
silence into song,
a room into a promise.
Who blushes at her own softness
like she does not know
what it does to a person
to witness it.

Even her fear is beautiful to me.
Even the child-heart of her,
that frantic, flinching, stubborn tender place.
Especially that.

Because she will still love
with both hands open,
still drag her own trembling heart into the fight
just to prove a point,
and still somehow go gentle
in places most people go cruel.

So no,
I cannot sit at the table
and discuss counterfeit
like it belongs in a gallery.

I cannot call water damage a floor plan.
I cannot call a squatter a steward.
I cannot call access devotion.
I cannot call appetite love.
I cannot call someone a partner
when they never show up for the build
but always know where the cash jar is.

Do not ask me
to look at an original work
and then nod seriously
at some knockoff signature
curling at the corners.
Do not ask me
to mistake ambulance-light chaos
for intimacy.
Do not ask me
to bow my head
while someone pawns heirlooms for pocket change
and swears they are building a future.

I have seen too much.

I have seen a mind
that can write a poem,
build a room,
learn a language made of logic,
dream in impossible detail,
and still laugh so suddenly and sweetly
it startles the air around her.

I have seen hands
capable of shelter.

That ruins my ability
to take ruin seriously.

Not because I am cruel.
Not because I am threatened.
Not because I need to spit on a name
to make myself feel taller.

It is simpler than that:

when you have seen stained glass lit from inside,
you do not become impressed by cracked plexiglass.
When you have heard a real song
still shaking in someone’s ribs,
you do not mistake static for symphony.
When you know what cedar beams smell like,
what real foundations require,
what labor love demands,
you do not stand in a wrecked foyer
and call mold a roommate.

You call it what it is.

You open the windows.
You strip the rot.
You save what can still be saved.

And if I sound angry,
good.

I am angry
the way a smoke alarm is angry,
the way a body is angry
when something foreign enters it,
the way truth is angry
when you dress it in cheap fabric
and try to pass it off as grace.

Because I look at her
and I do not see a cautionary tale.
I do not see a punchline.
I do not see somebody small enough
to be dimmed by bad taste.

I see an artist.
A musician.
A poet.
A builder.
A soft laugh with a steel spine.
A person with a child-heart
and a warrior’s follow-through.
I see someone so full of life
it spills out sideways,
through jokes,
through songs,
through plans,
through weird little treasures of knowledge,
through every ridiculous and radiant thing
she still reaches toward.

So understand me clearly:

my silence of this subject
is not surrender.
It is discernment.

I refuse to discuss
what does not belong
in the same frame.

I refuse to drag a masterpiece
into the pawn shop
for the comfort of anyone
who cannot tell gold from glitter.
Even when, she, herself,
cannot tell gold from glitter.

I know a house from a hazard.

And I know,
even now,
even like this,
even here,

what belongs beside her
and what was only ever
tracking mud through the sanctuary.