Here is where you fought the neighborhood bully,
Where your mother braided your hair for the first time
And your beloved dog ran away.
Here is where your children played children's games like "Mother May I"
And your brother begged for money
And you played cards and drank lemonade on murky summer nights.
Here is where it rained and snowed and shined and repeated.
Here is familiar.
Here is home.
The paint is chipped and the railing is rusted,
But you know.
You know that Here is okay.
Just as much as Here knowns your touch.
Your oils chipped that paint,
Your shoes caked that grime,
And your oxygen filled that space.
Here knows.
Your footsteps and your fingerprints are sensed
Within the pulsation of a crumbling foundation.
Stone, brick, and cement
Sturdy as glass.
You shatter.
Step by rotting step
from your heels to your head
you explode
under the cataclysmic pressure of Here.
Your eyes sharpen, jutting out.
Your hands tense, bursting into slivers of thorns
pin pricking spines of painful ruptures.
You climb on sticks of legs
Screaming in all directions for escape as you body mirrors your mind.
You climb the dilapidated stairs,
Chipping white paint,
Scraping the corners of nostalgia.
Here was familiar.
Here was home.
Here knows in flashes
Of children running,
Toddler in toe, bustling,
A life worth remembering.
But inside Here...
A There
Of broken wood and slipping plaster pieces dusting
With too much deep engraving to be picked up, dusted off, and placed anew,
Too public,
Too private.
A There so near to Here,
Yet too far from you.
You know.
For Here you stay exploded,
Fracture in fear
Of a There that's far too close.