the house.

family, a home of things. don't let it keep you from having one of your own of your own of your dreams. the apples in the crisper that taste like the ocean, the money jar on the island that jingles like a distant storm. oh, where will you be after the supermarket checks are cashed, after all the bills empty, will you ever make it out of the vortex? I am a box in a light storm and I am coming home dead. for the season. a little girl living in their upstairs room, exhausted from experimenting all day with different emotions. a boy in his twentysomethings lives in the room next door to her, enjoys the view of the outside, enjoys hearing the neighbors, learns how to make small talk from observing them. it's all a matter of environment, where one lives and breathes, after all. and a dirty brown carpet flows and empties into these rooms, connects the lives of these children like their mother's womb once did. a dense girl with too much stuff, too many interesting things to throw away. and he, too many stories to tell, people to be. bass rumble from an apathetic television set, a man clearing his throat six times and ripping open a second fizzingly menacing soda can. girl upstairs remembers the day they climbed through her ceiling into a soft and eerie attic, he showed her the little light that connected to the light of the first floor. she, amazed at what little lights could do. she, living under that other place where even the rats tried to escape. to where? a house with too many things. tables and paintings and textbooks and mismatched pictures of mismatched children and nothing much to offer. no scent even. big enough for one. big enough for something, everything beautiful. little girl makes words while brother makes stories while daddy makes houses while mother prays in silent poems in her office, making a life for us.