a home should be sacred, but what happens when the artistically curated facade of the happy family disappears? the home is no longer a home, what is left standing is the shell of a house.
If these walls could talk, they would replay recordings of young laughter and memories of the dirt-stained shirts that we wore all summer long. If these walls could talk, they would crumble with tears at the sound of your name, remembering a time when you were a kind man and we were a happy family. (PAUSE) If the chimney could burn one last fire and the bathtub could run one last bubble bath for restless children, the house would pull in the moments as they slipped by, each one just as seamlessly as it appeared. (PAUSE) Each shudder of the settling foundation would let out the memory of a loving embrace and a morning goodbye. The window seat would still be warmed where we sat to watch you go. (small laugh) The billowing curtains remember more of my life than you do. (PAUSE) My first day of kindergarten still fresh in the cool gusts that come through the window in mid-August. The stair railing will still recall the way I used it to fling myself off the stairs. The basement window will still remember the way I crawled out of it in a wretched act of teenage defiance late at night long after I’m gone. (PAUSE) The bedroom floors will not forget my nervous pacing and the silent nights of restless sleep thinking of where I would end up in the coming years, where we would end up. (PAUSE) The walls will never forget the yelling and fighting that seemed to never cease in those last three years. The floor will never forget how you threw me to it one night in a fit of drunken anger, and my tears will forever be stained in the dimples of the tile. (PAUSE) From a father, to a critic, to an alcoholic, to nothing, to no one. (PAUSE) In the years to come, the drywall will crumble, the roof will cave in, the chimney will no longer stand proud in the color that we painted it so long ago. The door will refuse to swing open, shut by layers of dust on the floor, and the windows will be clamped shut. The porch will collapse, the bedrooms will only host nature, and the kitchen will no longer cook the Sunday breakfasts. (PAUSE) When everything is gone, that house will still hold our memories, the good and the bad. As the door closes with a firm push once more, each sacred recollection of our family’s past will be trapped inside. (PAUSE) This house was the last place to see us happy and together. The last place to witness a family breakfast and the last place you told me you loved me. (PAUSE) Arms opened to the possibility of reunion, the house sits empty. (PAUSE) As for me, I will sit alone on my bed in a new and unfamiliar house, remembering the reasons for the rupture of the happy family, remembering how you changed, and thinking of all the ways I failed to make you want to stay.
origamiaround
areudirty
gummygunk
stormborns
dededos
