Occupation

They came in silence,
moving through the speckled shadows of the dawn
half-life
half-something else;
a strangeness

They came in with the news,
not in it
not carrying it to us;
but with the news they arrived,
silently.

We only read the words,
but with the reading,
we knew they had arrived
and what was ours
was passing from us.

They're sitting now in every room.
At night we almost hear them.
Fragmented whispers from up in the attic space,
beneath the eaves, where they have frightened
swallows from their nests.

Uninvited, they came
and like spiders filled the empty spaces.
The house is full now
and every empty room inhabited.

Never seen but always present,
they have made this house their home.
No fuss.
No malice.
But we know now this house is theirs
and we are only tenants.