Trees grow guns.
Money putrefies in the bank. The stink
seduces us. The smell piped through ventilators,
rising like bread. She wants us to buy a house now
before we get priced out in the cold.
In her mountain town the sea is far away.

I’ve been collecting shells. The homes
of mollusks who have died.
What she shows me are one bedrooms,
adorable as band-aids. Walls, scream-colored.
Every failure tucked behind the teeth
of splintered fences. Birds wallpapering
storm-dark colors in the sky.