There must have been a leak for days,
from the loose slates of the upstairs flat
into our box room ceiling
before the silence of wood and water
broke its seal and water dripped then streamed
in the bent of its nature,
taking genuine liberties as it passed
through the nails & tins of paint & Hoovers:
bric-a-brac turned into a public road
of dissolved varnish with its fingerprints
corresponding down plywood walls.

It is Christmas, though, and the leak
will not be fixed for days. Till then time
is measured in buckets and stains,
the exposure of the tacky innerworkings
of plywood walls, the profits
that can be derived from nature,
and a constant drip drip into and through our lives.

It is almost as if we cannot live now
in silence as before,
as if we are only what we leak,
and distrust the pristine transparency
of what we speak.