the dream of a crumbling apartment

Until, both suddenly and in agonizing slow motion it seemed, the ceiling came crumbling down— a great sodden mass of sheetrock, the way a wet cardboard box falls apart when overburdened.

Interior: a hidden room

It housed much of what I had been missing, as in the poem— symbolically, aspects of myself suffering some neglect. No mistake that the sprawling, feverishly researched and planned-for projects were the first things I unearthed.