you're an old mansion sitting weary on the lake

You’re an old mansion sitting weary on the lake.

It was 3am
and I was half drunk
sitting on a docked boat
on the lake behind her summer cottage.
Looking up, I asked her if she ever thought that the
stars look like they’re hanging from strings
like the universe is just a mobile.
She just smiled and shook her head,
the way she does when she tells me
I’m being ridiculous.

She changed the subject quickly and
told me we should walk over
to the other side of the lake where
the old mansions lie on tired ground.

“I don’t know, we can just sit there
and stare at them. “
“Why?”
“They’re beautiful. Don’t you want to
stare at something beautiful?”
“I guess. But I’d rather it be you.”

She stared blankly, looking confused as hell

That was the first time I had ever said
anything like that to her. It just fell out of
my mouth. I had held it in for three summers
because I know the way she pulls away from
people and I wanted her as close as I could get her,
even if it wasn’t very close at all.
That doesn’t really happen to me.
My lips are almost always wrapped in caution tape
but some things you can only keep to yourself for so long
until it’s all you see when you close your eyes.

“What do you mean?”
“I mean like… you’re my mansion,” I said with a
shaky voice, staring down at my hands.
I looked up to her baffled face
“Okay you’re being really confusing.”

“I mean like you’re the beautiful thing I want to stare at.”
She sat back down like her legs couldn’t
withstand the weight of what I’d just told her.


I felt like weeks had gone by and she still
hasn’t said anything or so much as blinked
Our eyes are still locked and
both of our jaws were on the ground
when she grabbed me by the neck of my favorite hoodie
and kissed me with warm lips on a cold night
and she pulled away and looked at me with damp eyes
and a smile. She wrapped both of her arms around
one of mine and put her hooded head on my chest
and said “you’re my favorite mansion.”

To me, she was always a picturesque,
furtive abandoned mansion
on a lake on a summer night with
a structure that will withstand the centuries
but weary walls filled with her history
but now she lets me wipe some of
the bad memories off of her walls even though
she’s got locks on all her doors and I love that,
that I’m the only one allowed inside of her walls.