The paint is chipping, the Christmas tree shutters hanging
Green on gray, brick stoop and twin column mouth
Opens to creaking stairs that made sneaking out commando work
My room made your favorite shade is gone, death to ugly orange
I used to think of it as my laboratory, safe haven for exploration
And abstract cultivation, I bled my innocence into the floorboards
There are still fist-sized holes along the stud that I detected
Remnants of the games I played and the four that I connected
The basement is still damp and dreary, the wooden cage for laundry suspended
At the bottom of a chute that you told me was the tomb of a curious girl
My weight bench, secondhand and mixed pounds with kilograms
Living in sin, vowed never to be defenseless training endless
The attic lends its hospitable hand to trapped bird and cobweb gems
Quarter-circle window kept by chain hungrily swallows smoke
Shelves packed so tight with yellowing knowledge and petrified wood
That if spiteful spark made love to
Musty air and
******* embers, I would never make it out
Déjà vu as backyard grass soothes badtripbitch with tingling tips
Of leathery flesh, ready to be buried and wormed in its bedbox
Overwhelmed like militia in failing keep against advancing hordes
Until nature’s handsome sprouts remind me life is beautiful, always
The trumpet vine grows hideous and spiny, roots reaching deep
Settles in its site and survives all assaults man-made
For a blink during the year its vermillion nectar tubes take flower
The hummingbirds find love outside my window in their bloom