by Avra Margariti McGill Library We listen to the heartbeats of the walls. The hummingbirds trapped inside wood panels and wainscoting. Apotropaic mummies, you say. Gods-in-the-making. We don’t know who suffers the most splinters: your earshells, or my fingertips. Soon your belly bulges like the moon, like the new house expanding with nightfall. The tocking creak of tick-infested wood. Condensation covers your stretching skin, an atavistic, immaculate conception. You tell me,