i wrote this like nine months ago, i think, and i just came across it while deleting some stuff from my computer. here 'tis

one day, it was time to take the house apart.

 

first there were vibrations so strong 

the windows sighed, then shattered obligingly.

their panes were removed without sorrow.

then the door, painted white, was kicked in.

it bowed deeply. no splinters. (it knew the time had come.)

the frame was removed without sorrow.

then the spirits came, 

taking the roof away as swiftly as they had brought it in.

the shingles waved and blew kisses as they watched the house fade-

higher and higher they climbed, until the house was but a rogue red balloon,

a single grain of sand on paper,

the first night star.

there was a warm knot of nostalgia, even a lump in the throat. but no sorrow.

then the bricks were taken.

one by one they were removed, and the stories inside them were removed too.

this one is too much time spent at herrick.

this one is sophie.

this one is summer camp realization.

this one is cold feet and hands.

this one is that time you were six years old, on a boat, the time you don't ever talk about.

no sorrow. just dismantling. 

no remorse. just arms flung upward, asking. 

 

mortar insistently holding on is scraped off.

bricks disseminated, no longer a latticework 

but a clusterfuck of groping valence electrons.

floorboards ripped up with fingernails.

(ravenous doesn't even begin to cover it.)

 

wait...

 

the foundation. (its the spirits.)

what?

the founDATION.

let the foundation stay. 

if you take that out, the empty space will be just another sad ragged patch of ground.

just another scar on the earth.

just another vacuous hole sucking life from its surroundings.

we don't need more of that here. (there's enough of it in tacoma.)

keep the foundation. 

one day you will build something better,

more beautiful, 

more harmonious.

just wait. keep it. you'll see.

it's not over yet.

you'll see.