The Day We Pulled the House Down

Dad had purchased the lot next door
and the weak old house that set on it.
Old neighbor Annie had lived there
and left her pieces of memories behind.
We combed the forgotten place and
found what we thought were treasures.
Two small green bottles with aged labels.
One for me and one for you.
Keepsakes of a day we’d remember
with vivid detail like a video loop
that repeats for an eternity in the mind.
We were all there, the family.
Dad, mom, all three siblings.
Dad and brother securing the thick rope
around the home and to the truck.
The truck’s grunting and pulling
until the house seemed to go up
in a puff of smoke, but it was dirt
and the house was falling,
folding in on itself like an unnatural bloom.
Five of us watched it die a loud dirty
long unsettling human-like death.
It left us each shaken in some odd way.
We couldn’t know then that it was a metaphor
for what can happen to regular people
like us in the huge crap game called life.
Our family became a house of abandoned
rooms, cobwebs hanging in dark corners.
Someone took all the trinkets we left there.
Nothing was costly; just precious to us.
It didn’t even feel like home anymore.
Then the house that was home was pulled
by the thick rope that surrounded it.
The foundation crumbled in surrender
and the walls gave up the good fight
It fell with the cry of a valiant, but tired soldier.
We all shed tears as we watched it happen.

Now, home is not a place we can go
by taking a particular road or certain turn.
But the house of the mind has countless rooms
full of lovely things to smile about.