My body,
This overgrown graveyard,
This home for ghosts of the wrongly loved,
Doors open to broken souls,
Offering a warm bed,
Clean clothes,
A listening ear.
Most come in the winter
When the cold starts to ache and
The snow sinks through the gauze bandages and the wounds start to drip again,
There's never enough firewood,
Have to start chopping down trees,
Even the new peach tree at the edge of the yard,
So they can stay warm.
The blizzards shake the power out so they all congregate in the atrium,
Divulge tales around burning furniture
Of how they found this place,
This decrepit shelter
Turning more skeleton than home,
Their voices bounce off the hardwood floor,
Come to a resting point,
Fade out.
An old man with sad cheekbones who tried to drink his father back to life but only stumbled through the front door drunk,
A child in her Auntie's pearls led to the porch by a boy hungry for anyone,
The brokenhearted boy and the girl he could never hold tight enough who walked in on the same night but never called it fate,
The swollen lung man who choked on his words and fell blue faced in the entryway,
They all take up rooms here,
Mark their heights on the pantry door even though it never changes,
Claim ownership of these walls as they pull off the paper and paint over the scraps left behind,
The roof is starting to cave in because
They've started using the pillars for kindling.
They don't call this place home,
Don't plant any seeds in the garden that will take too long to sprout,
They call it an in-between,
Call it a place to spend the night,
Call it falling apart
As they tear it down,
Call it a place to hide while they fix their mistakes,
Leave their mistakes stuffed in the knife drawer.
When winter begins to melt
And the grass sticks up through the snow
They find their way out,
Leave with fresh pink scars,
Leave their used bandages in the bathtub,
Take a strip of wallpaper,
A peach from the tree by the edge of the yard
To remember it by.