Jessica F. Smith

Our new house is too big.
The dog is lost within the rooms.
I cannot hear my sister’s sleeping breath,
my parents’ soft snores.
The house is too big.
There are large, strange spaces in it
where old ghosts still linger–
our own are too small to fill them.
Distance devours the hated ticking clock
yet now the silence feels empty,
like a bag without marbles.
The world is big.
A tornado in China will not disturb
the slightest Canadian butterfly’s wing.
I can shake a billion hands and
always meet a stranger.
The universe is immense.
Only the stars hold it together,
with no more strength than
the slight whisper of each others´ breath.