We haunted the boulevard in silence,
lamplights dull in the night of June,
eyes wide like walking disasters
our lights died inside of us too soon.
Our bones they ached with every footstep,
somber skeletons stained with broken flesh
monuments to the scar tissue,
that’s all that we had left.

You cried then started laughing,
but I could hear the pain inside your chest
as you couldn’t remember the last time that you had slept,
slept in your own bed.
And you said “I miss home, wherever that is.”
I wish I could’ve told you it was inside your heart,
we were a long way from there now,
but at least we could’ve had a place to start.
But where do you start when picking up the pieces?
When there’s oh so many shards?

And oh the shards they no longer fit together,
worn away by what they are. And what they are,
are just phantoms of who they used to be, our fathers, our idols,
they threw our lives across the lawns of the houses
we’ve lived in since the day that we were born.

The same hands that raised us couldn’t tame us,
I’m sorry we weren’t born to be like them
they’re our fathers, not by circumstance,
but just like everybody else,
even our parents leave us in the end.
But without them we wouldn’t be here,
I wouldn’t get to hear you laugh,
I wouldn’t get to see the warmth in your tragic eyes
or even hold you in my arms.

And I would trade a thousand lives
just to spend this moment with you,
dying on the boulevard in the dull lamplights
of this night in June.

Underneath the coffee table, the throw rug collects dust and memories.
Twenty five years she’s had that mat and it hasn’t moved an inch
and there are creases where the coffee table sinks.  

Underneath the couch is the toy car that you lost at a distant age,
and on the shelf sits all your favorite books                
of which she read to you every page.
And by the couch sit her glasses, faux gold, frames engraved,
cloaked in dust atop the nightstand that her husband built before his grave.
And above the fireplace is a photo of you when you were young,
the anchor in her darkest storms,
you are the reason she never came undone.
And beneath that are your parents,
their names carved neatly into the box,
but you don’t talk about them anymore,
your heart barely remembers the loss.
But her heart never forgot.

There are creases where the coffee table sinks holding onto faded caffeine stains
and the pungent death of cigarettes she smoked on the night that you left
still lingers all the same.

This is where you never listened.
This is where she used to sit.

This house is a mausoleum of her life, love and effort.
She did her best to keep you safe, so how could you forget it?
All she wanted was to provide and in the end you left her neglected.
And there are creases where the coffee table sinks, right where she left it.