The House Eater

First the radio disappeared
from our house, a blank space
taking its place on the shelf where it once
chattered and sang all day. After that,
it was the rice cooker, then the washing
machine, the VHS player, until one day
I was watching a flower vase instead
of a television. I thought there was a thief
or a gang of dwarves stealing our things,
but mother told me it was father’s sickness,
his addiction that was taking things away.
At that time I didn’t know what addiction
meant, I thought it was some unstoppable
and consuming hunger. And I imagined
my father crouched over our things and
eating them, disemboweling the TV,
filling his mouth with bolts and wires,
Like the strange man I’d seen on Ripley’s,
a man who ate bicycles and airplanes.
Oh I didn’t doubt my father was sick.
he’d grown so thin it seemed he too
might vanish, though he still sat me
on his lap and told me stories, though
there were still traces of the kind giant
who’d taught me how to play ball. My mother
wept all the time and screamed at him
to get the hell out, but I loved
my father so much I wanted to feed him
my own bed, to offer everything I owned
on one large plate. If that wasn’t enough,
I was willing to give him the living
room and kitchen, the bathroom with its
delicious faucets and sink, the study
with its rows and rows of books as dessert.
He could eat the whole house if that
was what it would take for him to get better.
Never mind if we ended up sleeping
on the street, never mind if the dark sky
were to be our only ceiling. Whenever
I think back to the house of my childhood,
I see my father with his open mouth
and me spooning my life in.