Destroying the House with You

by Rich Boucher

Let’s start with the kitchen.

A kiss first, and then let’s upend the table
and send the vase slow-motion flying to the floor.
And then another kiss. And another.
Grab the back of this fridge with me
and let’s push it over as hard as we can,
if only for the sound of thunder indoors.
Why don’t you hold my hand, my sweet,
as we bring our boots up, kick out the window
behind the sink together; it will be as if
we’ve never been told how to act.
We will be the kindergarten playground
within us, clamorous, unleashed.

With the kitchen behind us on fire,
let’s please do decimate the living room;
let’s make it feel its own doomsday
with a smashed-in, thrown television
and TV trays snapped in half for IKEA kindling,
the K-Mart family portraits curling black and burning;
run your loving hands all over me
while I spritz some lighter fluid all over the couch
like a blasting of aromatic and demonic pee.

We’ll take out the bathroom with explosives;
I’d like to see the tub go flying through the ceiling
and up into the sky like a confused porcelain rowboat;
I’ll hold you from behind and let my hands get frisky
while the wavering flag of the shower curtain
burns a plasticene rainbow before our eyes.

The bedroom I think we should save for last;
that would be the best place for firemen to find us;
our crumbly remains an ashen Cupid and Psyche embracing
on the overgrown charcoal pit of our marriage bed,
two glasses of wine’s worth of shards on the sheets
glinting in the flashlight beams like diamonds left in a tomb.