The Day We Pulled the House Down<\/p>\n
Dad had purchased the lot next door
\nand the weak old house that set on it.
\nOld neighbor Annie had lived there
\nand left her pieces of memories behind.
\nWe combed the forgotten place and
\nfound what we thought were treasures.
\nTwo small green bottles with aged labels.
\nOne for me and one for you.
\nKeepsakes of a day we\u2019d remember
\nwith vivid detail like a video loop
\nthat repeats for an eternity in the mind.
\nWe were all there, the family.
\nDad, mom, all three siblings.
\nDad and brother securing the thick rope
\naround the home and to the truck.
\nThe truck\u2019s grunting and pulling
\nuntil the house seemed to go up
\nin a puff of smoke, but it was dirt
\nand the house was falling,
\nfolding in on itself like an unnatural bloom.
\nFive of us watched it die a loud dirty
\nlong unsettling human-like death.
\nIt left us each shaken in some odd way.
\nWe couldn\u2019t know then that it was a metaphor
\nfor what can happen to regular people
\nlike us in the huge crap game called life.
\nOur family became a house of abandoned
\nrooms, cobwebs hanging in dark corners.
\nSomeone took all the trinkets we left there.
\nNothing was costly; just precious to us.
\nIt didn\u2019t even feel like home anymore.
\nThen the house that was home was pulled
\nby the thick rope that surrounded it.
\nThe foundation crumbled in surrender
\nand the walls gave up the good fight
\nIt fell with the cry of a valiant, but tired soldier.
\nWe all shed tears as we watched it happen.<\/p>\n
Now, home is not a place we can go
\nby taking a particular road or certain turn.
\nBut the house of the mind has countless rooms
\nfull of lovely things to smile about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11669,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11663\/revisions\/11669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}