"John, Jennifer, Sarah, can I talk to all of You? Together?"
Words that I thought too little of and too much of, in unison.
My
Heart dropping
My
Mind dismissing my troubled emotions
"I'm sure it's nothing big" I thought to myself "it must be about dishes, or the broken garbage disposal, right?"
But,
My subconscious knew how wrong I was;
what my sheltering thoughts tried to ignore:
"We
Are getting evicted."
9 years of memories, not gone, but the house they were made in
We will no longer occupy
And
Will never occupy again.
I
Am not exactly sure how to feel
I
Don't really know if I am feeling too little, or too much
I
Don't think I've really even processed the fact yet.
What I thought would be a family conference about cleaning, or dishes turned into news we never saw coming
How
Does one process something you were never expecting to come.
We have
2 weeks:
To process,
To appreciate,
To memorize,
To let go.
Nothing I haven't been through before, and on shorter notice in the past
So this time
I will be stronger,
And older
I will be wiser than my constantly moving child-self ever was
I will
Not break, or crack under the pressure or the weight of past memories
I will
Mature
And be sturdy
And do the most that I can to help.
Because this
Isn't, and won't be easy on any of us.
So I
Will do my best
And we will get through this,
All of us,
Together.

Can't call 911 for this,
I can't save you this time.

Open the curtains for the first time in ages.
The walls weep,
dripping yellow-brown nicotine,
crying brown tears for you.
Carpet stained spots of brown black blood,
a macabre Jackson *******.
Stained, sweat-soaked sheets smell,
the stench of withdrawal and agony.
**** and mold growing on the toilet,
like tiny bonsai trees.

The sun catches your face,
lightly touching a cheek-bone,
saying goodbye in it's own way.
Hazel eyes wide open,
mouth frozen,
a sort of painful grimace.

I want to clean it all away.
I want to scrub every wall,
every moulding,
every inch.
Bleach it all white.
Pull the **** across a giant etch-a-sketch of the scene.
And when it's clean,
When all of it is finally clean...

I will cover every wall like a canvas, with every note you ever left me.
Top to bottom,
wall to wall,
I will paint your words.
When I was away too long and you missed me,
when you wanted to cheer me up,
Or when you just wanted to say,
"I love you".