14 Years It's Been

14 years it's been.
So long since homemade jam and dew-lit grass.
So long since the scent of whiskey and dry blood.
So long since childhood friends and big apple trees.

The house has withered,
A flower in a graveyard of dirt and overgrown weeds.
Its lips are dry and cracked,
Paint peeling from the stench of rotting wood.
Its eyes are hollowed and bent,
Glass shattered and refracting the light of the gray sky.
Abandoned.

Where I used to laugh, to cry, to yell.
Where my mother held me after a cold bath.
Where my father broke my favorite toy.
Time was no friend of this ashen corpse.

I stepped onto the naked porch,
Stripped of the once lush, white floor-boards.
The posts could hardly bear the weight.
The dead weight of a dead place.

I touched the decay-infested walls,
Tracing my fingers along the splintered, weak frame.
The front door was battered,
Tired of locking out the world.

My suit and dress shoes made awkward contrast,
An angel in the aftermath of war.
All that I touched seemed somewhat brighter,
But there was no room for my wings here.

The inside has long been disemboweled,
Bleeding of cobwebs and twisted furniture.
The table where we used to eat,
Lay propped on one knee,
Begging to God.

So much nothing here,
So little that remained.
Old photos flaking with age,
Faces blotted in white,
Posing like mannequins.

I sat down and crossed my legs.
I closed my eyes and listened,
Concentrating on the aching foundation.
The whole of this space,
It screamed for mercy.
The wallpaper was blotched in tears.
This house never stopped crying.

Neither did I.
But they couldn't hear me from so far away.
There was always too much noise.


I wrote this for my high school's Literature Magazine, which I ran with a good friend of mine. It was a lot of fun to write, and is a favorite of mine.