What I Know How to Build

My niece asked me

to draw a house.

I drew the same one

I've always drawn.

Slanted roof.

Door in the center.

Two windows.

One window.

Then on the left side:

nothing.

Just wall.

Just empty brick.

Just the thing

I can never explain.

She asked:

Why no window there?

I looked at what I'd made.

Fifteen years of the same house.

Same blank side.

Same small door.

Same inability

to make it symmetrical,

to make it whole,

to draw a thing

that looks

like someone actually lives there.

What do you tell a child

about the houses you build

inside your head?

That the left side

faces something

I'm not ready to see?

That I've been leaving

one whole side empty

because I don't know

how to make it match?

That every house I've ever drawn

is the same confession

about the rooms I won't enter,

the windows I won't open,

the way I've always been

half-built?

She took the pencil.

She drew windows on the blank side.

She made it whole

in about three seconds.

I kept my version.

Crooked.

Incomplete.

The house

I know how to build,

the only one

that feels true,

the only one

that looks like

how I actually live—

half in,

half out,

one whole side

facing a wall.