We live in one room,

which means everything happens at once.

Morning socks abandoned on the floor

Small fights about the last slice of rye.

 

At night the room becomes enormous,

because the floor is large enough for games,

for rhymes and pretending the chairs are islands

where deserted spaces between them are sea.

 

The hammock becomes a swaying ocean ship

the stove an ignited amber planet

the bed a huge wool-blanketed mountain

my sister and I climb every night.

 

The little ones dawdle by the cast iron beast,

a careful distance from the blue metal animal

watching the smolder of the creature’s mouth

that eats wood and exhales winter’s opposite.

 

The walls eavesdrop on everything we become

our giggles, our quarrels, the turning of seasons

until the room feels larger than a house,

enough to fit inside the sound of shared breath.

 

People say that some families have many rooms

a room for eating the earth’s heavy bounty

a room for sleeping when the stars begin its vigil

a room for lullabies of the mute.

 

I try to imagine it but it seems strange

to have a place where nothing else happens

but in our room, everything happens.

Dreams, colds, stories, crying, summer heat.

 

So when umbra falls and the blankets meet

I nudge closer to my sister’s steady shoulder,

and I think that perhaps houses grow bigger

only when people start living farther apart.