I happened to be in town again
and decided to swing by the house where I had been raised.
I had been warned that it might seem small and shabby
next to the memories we harbor
and yes
it did appear to be a little smaller than I remembered,
but shabby?
Not really.
Someone was taking pretty good care of the place.
I suppose they thought they owned it,
just as my parents had once thought it was theirs.
As I stood there,
running details through my mind,
I realized some things were missing.
There was no boy sneaking a smoke behind the garage,
no friends chucking pebbles at the bedroom window,
hoarsely whispering “come on, let’s go”.
nor did I see a girl sitting on the front porch
staring at the mailbox
waiting for her boyfriend to come back from war.
Nowhere to be seen was the bored and dissatisfied woman,
angry at the situation life had left her in.
But most conspicuous in his absence was the man,
the king who could stop a conversation
by merely looming in the doorway.
The new owners had kept things up pretty well,
with birds of paradise planted in the new flower beds
and roses climbing on the new white trellis.
But a lot of things were different now
and the new people had no way of understanding
what it was that was missing and gone.