Not because she told me
you and all your work were just a tree-fort
and to get inside one had to trust
the flimsiest of whining rungs
(nailed, nailed, and re-nailed in the trunk),
how the floors were rotten plywood,
a lattice-work of soggy two by fours,
conspiring to keep you in there,
until another backup plan unfolded;
but because you were the only one
to stay up there overnight,
when everybody promised that they’d come.

And there was nothing, really, up there
except you in your tree fort, as if
a life depended on it,
as if life depended on a life depending on it
as it did.