i'm at the old house i grew up in
the bathroom is on more of a slant than it should be
it's painted heavily in shades of blue
light blue, dark blue, slate blue
the walls are rickety
the floor creaks and the joists wobble more
than they should safely
i am my current age
but interacting with my family in the age they were
when i lived there.
i dive into the closet that "hid" pornography
likely my father's. likely.
this doesn't go well, and
i am disciplined like i would have been then.
there are also cassette tapes in the closet
that shouldn't be there. there should be a collapsable play pen.
the cassette tapes are ones i owned later
as we go outside
an old man stands in the wind storm
he is withered, wrinkled, darkened by years in the sun
with no protection.
no protection.
no protection.
he stands at a profiled angle holding his arms out
at right angles to his body.
all the right angles. right angels? right?
his hat protects him vainly from the elements
the wind and flying debris.
he's talking to me as the house sits in a windstorm
pieces are fly off like dried tree bark
the colors are all in shades of brown outside
i see billboards that remind me of tanned leather
i am yelling at him and telling him how much i miss him
how much i miss that house
and the life i had then and how it was so simple.
so simple, so magical. so bright the sun in the summer
the days lasted forever. for.ever.
my heart pounds as i write about it and my eyes are welling up
i've had this dream before. i know it.
i know the words that are coming up
scratch that.
i know the tone of the words coming up
i know the gestures.
as i plead my case to him
he barely turns his head to talk to me.
he cuts me off and begins to scream back,
"fuck that time.
fuck those people.
fuck those rosy memories of what may have never happened.
fuck the bad times as well.
fuck it all,
and fuck you too."
i respond exasperated with my heart pounding on my sleeve,
"what?
but those were the best times i ever had.
those days seem so long ago and seemed to last forever.
i haven't had anything near the good times i had then.
my heart dies off a little more everyday that i'm away."
He turns. i know i'm failing.
it's at this point i realize that the withered man in the weather
is two people at once
he is my father and he is me
he turns to me and tells me
with debris flaking away from the house
the house is disintegrating to a skeleton of rotting wood
he turns to me and tells me
with smoke in the air
there's a fire somewhere
he turns to me and tells me,
that its gone.
"nothing then is now. everything has changed, as it does
as time goes by, time goes by too.
your neighbors are older. your neighbors are dying. some already have.
your friends are older. your friends are dead. most don't remember you.
your family is older. your family is dying. some already died."
"remember your grandfather?"
i'm stunned. i can't even twitch.
"the house is someone else's home. it houses someone else's memories now.
it doesn't look the same. the tree is gone. your school is gone.
the family car burned down. the buckeye tree is chopped down.
you don't get mail there anymore.
you don't live there anymore.
so fuck it all. it is gone.
no one is still living there. not you, not your family, friends, neighbors.
no one."
flattened, i wake
the room is completely silent.
absolutely and completely silent.
no sound of breathing, no sounds from my lover,
no animals outside. nothing.
i am so incredibly alone in that moment.
it seems a hundred miles to my lover
sleeping 2 feet away.
in their silence
i understand the angels have left me
for the last time.
