This place is dead

Except for the cars that fill the seven eleven and WaWa parking lots late at night
They come in waves
But I come with them also
I like to think they come in waves instead of alone, leaving and coming
Waves that fill up the lots

Like the children that have come to fill my household
I am also one of them
And will be for a while I think

The good thing is that my home is not dead
The place is alive
Just as it would be on Christmas or Thanksgiving
As it is on any other day, holy or not
The place is alive, thriving
Its chest expands with each breath
And its diaphragm rises again with every exhalation
It can't be kept down
Not for long
Not while I am still on the back porch filling my lungs with smoke
Blackening as some things should be
Perhaps as those lots should be
Black with asphalt
But also white with the artificial lighting
The deceptive illumination giving a sense of day
Hiding from the night
The house will never be such a creature
The bodies glow enough with warmth and of things that are natural and alive
And the blackened lungs that rest with me in my body on this back porch are still a part of that
Despite the blackness