Building Science

Building Science

Before you knew about air-sealing, 

how conditioned air slips through the ceiling

where the top-plates joint the walls

and through all the other holes

for wire, venting, and the like, the house

was built right. Before, of a given afternoon,

some uninvited word peeled back 

the insufficient insulation of your life 

to show you just how much was being 

lost, how far from code you’d strayed,

(or rather, how laughably thin the code

has been whittled away for what will pass

these days,) you might have kicked back

the easy chair and passed for something like

content, ignorant of just how inefficiently 

breath leaks between your ribs, just how much

you're paying for it. But now,

the illusion of structurally sound 

torn down to the studs, there’s no going back.

You're forever a fugitive in your own

house, wind wracking this wasteland

you wander. At least boredom is a solid option

no longer, your days stretched out

like half-hidden trusses for toeing,

your new knowing both wound and blessing,

the double-edged cut of eyes sharpened

to catch light slicing through innumerable cracks.