The House We Lived In
The house was lived in.
Just what you’d expect
with two young boys,
two working parents,
and just enough income
to hold it together.
Our home was a castle.
Surrounded by a moat of
if not quite shame
then embarrassment.
Fast food remnants
peeking out of the trash can.
The bedrooms never quite tidy.
The lawn, unmanicured.
The living room, filled
with mismatched second-hand furniture.
But not the room
reserved for company.
We felt
the house we lived in
was maybe not quite what you’d expect
of community pillars.
Having guests over
even just kids
was an ordeal.
All hands on deck.
Shoving as much as we could
into closets.
The smell of Pledge
masking the smell of
living.
So we spent more time at friends’ houses
where we were too busy living
to notice how lived-in their houses were.
And how did mom
never notice how miserable
we all were, even her,
when we visited Sister Ida’s showroom house?
It was perfect.
And no one wanted to be there.
