Language Is a House
Language is a house we live in, and grammar, the housekeeper who posts the rules on the door to each room we enter: This is how we say things here. The housekeeper insists on proper sentences, but love speaks in fragments and unfinished lines. Some rooms are locked for being too unruly, their language deemed improper. And though the housekeeper sweeps the same dust daily, the walls keep forgetting their shape. The windows of the house look out on what we call trees because that is what we have agreed to call them instead of spiders or dogs. Trees don’t mind at all, but they, themselves never use the word, even though an oak can tell itself apart from a pine. The windows also look out on what we call the horizon toward which everything appears to sink as if it were a hole, but it’s not. When we step outside the house we must carry the window with us, else we are apt to stumble over a dog or be bitten by the spider or fall into a hole in the horizon. If such as that were to occur, eviction might be considered; at the very least, the housekeeper would make an entry in her ledger. She would not be amused.


Thank you for sharing this poem, @Marpy Hayse
Thanks to @Wendy Gray gir this restack 💜💜