HOME | DD

Description
Today, I went back to this place the government calls my home.
I don't call this place home, I'm not sure I ever really did,
What with its eclectic furniture; not at all my taste.
The random bits and bobs and long-unused pieces;
The overflowing paperwork and unread stacks of Science Times and Nature magazines.
Rooms used too much, alongside those used too little,
Drawers that stick and remain stuck only so they may be complained about,
Tables that wobble and only still stand to be admired; never used.

There's the Diego Rivera print whose frame I cut my hand on when I was nine.
And the glass end table my grandfather made long before my birth; its only known function served as something for small childrens' skulls to crack on.
There is the fireplace where many-a-time it was fought over who would light the first log.
Here is the spot of crawlspace that when I was six and still small enough to fit I would squeeze into, to curl up and pray to a god I was not allowed to believe in.
That is the bathroom whose door was always so easily forced open, ruining my one place of privacy.
This is the shower under whose head I spent many an hour, trying to wash the scum of suburbia from my fragile child-sized body.
Here are the old stairs whose creaking pattern I learned at such a young age from my place huddled under thin covers in the now-rickety bed.
And there is the dirty-paned glass of the door, old enough as to be in a state not unlike that of an outdated banker - the type that used to count out your money for you by hand - now useless in the face of machines that spit out the bills with an automated, "Thank you for using PNC Bank. Please come again".
Here is the stoop on which I once sat, blood gushing down my leg: consequence of a construction mishap whilst repaving the walkway now once again in disheveled fragments scattered underfoot.
There are the trees I hid behind and the plants I skirted so as not to crush in my play.
This is the scattered slate stepping-stone path I follow out back to the old deck, now in need of a new coat of varnish and stain.

Looking out from the shabby deck I spent hours pounding nails into; over the dirty pool I spent hours clearing of debris; across the dead lawn I spent hours raking leaves from: I glimpse the treehouse built by hours of hard work from dozens of childs' hands.
A teenaged version of my now-older self assaults my vision; perched atop that tall treehouse - staring down at the ground so far below and not so far at all - cigarette in hand, gently swaying back and forth with the wind.
As I retreat back to that windy sanctuary the boards creak and bend under my adult-weight in a way I do not remember.
At the ritual-lifting of myself up the hole bridging levels one and two, to stand perched upon that height -- once again staring towards that ground so far away and not so far at all -- I am shocked by the realization that this house, this land, this place the government calls my home is not so far off from the shelter I stand upon, the shelter I know to be a place I call home.