Platitudes

In flames,
as if I were
a forest;
washed away,
as if I were 
a bridge;
shaken to ground
as if I were an old home 
built before
earthquake code. 

Now, you say.
Now you can rebuild.
It’s glorious.
It’s your dream.

I am alone with it, though.
The sheets are drunk
with my sweat
and only my sweat,
and this is not how
I imagined it.

Broken as I am,
on fire as I am,
on the ground as I am,
the flood lapping and rising
up this one hill upon which
I have found myself,

glory and the honest joy
of rebuilding
seem quaint notions 
upon which to rely.