My Dream House

We build a home and keep
working on it all through life
to have a place in which to die, for
anywhere else death would not be true,
only a disappearance;

the colors of the day
perish with a breeze,
and so does the flavor
of handshakes and hugs,
whether sweet or sour,

but man must go out carrying
the mask of death,
must have a wall where to hang
the finished picture,
the collage of a life,

but it’s more like a group photo without faces,
left at a flea market in the sticking drawer of a chest, 
when it comes to a mislaid life,
a disappearance deprived
of the parting kiss of a living house;

death demands the embrace of walls papered
with snapshots, pictures, bills
and death certificates.

We must build that house
before it can be demolished.