House

When I close my eyes,
I can still step onto that porch
and enter the arched doorway
of the house I grew up in.

And though it is long gone,
torn down to make way
for something bigger,
I can still feel
the carpet beneath my feet,
worn down
by the coming and going
of so many children.

I touch the textured plaster walls,
covered with a dozen layers of paint,
the piano keys,
now silent.
I hear the ticking
of the wind up wall clock,
the creaking of the wooden steps
as I go upstairs
to where we slept,
dreaming of our somedays.
I can smell the musty smells
of a house that has absorbed
decades of life.

I know every inch intimately
because once, long ago,
it was my whole and only world.
It is the background
to all of my memories.

Which is not to say
I loved it,
(I did and I didn’t)
just that,
with all of its
strengths and defects,
its comfort and mayhem.
with all of its confusing contradictions,
it was,
and still is,
the invisible foundation
on which everything else
is built.

By Maria Brady-Smith