Ramshackles.

It seems like all the houses are crumbling

Around me nowadays.

I can hear the whispers of wind and weather

Pass through the thick line of trees behind my home.

I lay awake late at night

And listen to this house breathe.

Its organs hum deep in its depths

And the chimney flue near my room takes in breath.

Inhale,

Exhale,

I can hear its lungs gasping against my wall

As plain as breath in a doctor's stethoscope.

My home, with glowing eyes

Of windows with my family's life behind them,

Is alive.

But, I have tripped over sidewalks latticing the neighborhood

And seen the sad abodes,

With rust leaking down the windowsills

Like mascara on a derelict girl.

I also have jumped through dilapidated brick foundation

Onto rotten boards splitting as water and weeds

Burst from the Earth and wear down the structure

Like the sand of time in the ever present hourglass.

The windowpanes are shattered,

Light floods through them in irregular patterns.

Clumps of henbit and nutsedge tickle my thighs

As I traipse though the ruin of a once-proud house.

Where children played on a floor, there is only bugs and weeds.

The bed he slept in is gone, replaced

By shafts of light and broken wood and rock.

I turn back to gaze on slightly stirring yellow fields,

Their rustling dry leaves jostling in anticipation

Of reclaiming the land on which these ruminating dwellings stood.