A Home, Once

Image Credit: Samuel Branch on Unsplash

This used to be a home.

Comings and goings of spirited soles,

Laughter jogging up the stairs,

Arguing with the cracks in the plaster.

Now all that's left is silence,

Heavy, like the dust that clings to the corners.

This used to be a home.

Not just shredded muscles of cement walls,

Or brittle bones of iron rods.

Not just the rotting corpses of generational furniture,

Or the stench from oozing floorboards.

Paint peels from the walls like scabs,

And ghosts of lullabies linger in the rooms.

Spiders record yesteryear in their webs,

Replacing blemishes from framed photographs,

Framing remains of their own.

Overgrown weeds guard the entrance,

And cataract-ridden windows barely see

Through the haze of fading memories,

As if the house, too, forgets

Which direction the wind once carried hope.

Time gnawed at the foundation.

Slow and unfeeling,

Consuming names and faces.

Once-familiar voices now pulse faintly,

Like strains from another life

That never quite finished their story.

If I listen close enough,

I can hear the sighs of the roof,

The murmurs from a door that never closed fully.

The house, through staggered breaths,

Remembers how we used to live.

I step over the threshold,

Careful not to wake the chrome doorknobs,

Asleep in the reminiscence of returning hands.

The vines crawling through the windows,

Like veins through the body of the house,

Throbbing with forgotten years.

The air is different now,

Heavy with time, not grief.

Like bones beneath the earth,

It too has been left to decay.