After you shout at the child

we drive past pine branches

stacked on the side of the road

and I want to make a home

of these materials

in which she can live.

You will be faraway

or incommoded as in tales.

Between here and there

is a modest upstairs flat lit low.

It’s not clear that this is my new life,

not clear that I can build the pine shelter

and leave it for her—or that

this is what the shelter becomes in the day.

The music playing is diegetic

but it’s a sound

that does not suit us all.