"There! I Said It" by Nellie W.

“There!”  I said it.  

I made the place by speaking it

I made it there.

I said of all of its coppices and dales and other landmarks like ‘berms’ and ‘riparian barriers’

whose meaning  I never bothered to look up, but could speak into being.  

I said its cornices, its ballasts, its transoms, its cupolas 

I said its spires, turrets, and onion domes, 

although I’m sure I used the proper word* for those when I said it

I said its paint colours, and traced its wallpaper patterns with my in-breaths

I said its furniture: 

its davenports, duvet covers, hutches, armoires, Louis XVI, ‘Louie Says’

I took out the bar, the house-warmed, conspicuous-consumption bottles atop the fridge, 

the vodka vases at the verdant triptych-scene bay window 

I said the cushions, the ottomans, ottomen? 

The parlour talk-therapy chaise lounge, ‘chase long’ 

I said this meticulous there and I made it the place 

where I could be my grown-ass, sober, self.

I spoke it into being like a reverse  memory palace where the object fixes before the word,

proliferating like a crystal growing kit I somehow got from a comic book

near the picture of the grinning seamonkey family with the trident 

though the ads were decades old 

by the time I could read and long to send away for my x-ray specs 

I said “There!”, so I made it,

I identified it, so it could be mine.

So that someday soon I could host and entertain.

Let me assure you it was squalor, derelict, and nearly abandoned  before the remodeling.  

The silent 98-pound weakling thought, if quiet enough, 

pearls would form in her tear ducts from all the sand kicked  in her face.

I think it’s almost ready to open soon.

Would you like to meet me?

Would you meet me here?

*луковичная глава, lúkovichnaya glavá