Two For Alice (Edit #4 with punctuation)

[tectak]

The Same Dilemma

The opening lines are

your empty house sits
snuggled in its same footprint

I am using the word same as unchanged, but judging by the consistent objections by readers this is not coming across.

I am reluctant to change this too much, I thinks it's important to the poem and I love it. I am also committed to retaining the 5,7,5,7,7 format, I think something would be lost if I abandoned it.

The only thing I can come up with is

your empty house sits
snuggled in its set footprint

Any opinion on whether or not this is just confusing in another way?

You are confusing confusion with over-precision! It is not for you to decide how your readers are confused, that is down to them The point, anyway, is not that we are confused by the choice of word, but that we were over informed by it. The addition of ANY durationally descriptive word before footprint (a static entity if ever there was one!) in the sentence is tautological.
Best,
tectak

Where I live, when rebuilding a house you need to maintain the same footprint in order to be exempt from current property size codes. This was actually done to the house in the poem, razed and rebuilt without any change in its footprint.

I don't know if this matters when I am the only one thinking of it this way, but yes, a footprint can change.

Yes. Of course it can....but then it is a different footprint...so until it changes it is tautological to say it is the same.
Best,
tectak