The first to be accused
of robbing the good Captain
were local Indigenous men
and the bullet hole is still wedged
in the doorframe by the white thieves
who put it there
Accessory to precarious lives,
the house stands in limbo
of livelihood and trespass
When I enter, an interloper,
I rewind generations back,
and un-nest cultural selves
in each room, a settler,
an immigrant's child
touring false pasts;
a witness out of time
on these front steps
This colonial inheritance lords
a hilltop named for presiding ghosts
but not the ghosts it made
in its providential prime
This house is a tenuous threshold
sooted in knowing its golden wallpaper
curls in detritus networks, feather fine
atop bones of brutality
Under its garden of opulent flowers,
opiate trash blooms from Royal Ave
Jessica Lee McMillan © 2022
Published September 8, 2022 in RCLAS Wordplay at Work, Issue 93