Abandoned Home

It didn’t look too big, kind of tall perhaps. It was quiet. A family once loved one another there. The old tricycle, rusting around the handle bars, and countless baby dolls were a testament to their love. Something went wrong. The house was boarded up. The roof was covered with tarp with a lone off white sneaker hanging from the gutters, Nike swish faded with age. Another pair of shoes, black and red, were slung over a collection of tires. In one tire, speckled spiders hung and looped, creating a tapestry home where a butterfly laid in bounded hell. A yellow stained mattress marked the center of the back yard. Thrown over were some torn shirts that looked to have been used as rags. On top of the pile was a Powerful Puff Girls shirt, pink and frayed. A VCR/DVD player on a plastic chair, a hula hoop propped up against the broken fence, a wooden picture frame amidst a colony of coat hangers all show a family that left in a hurry. The corners of the window panes were blackened and singed. The back door slumped against a wall of the home, hinges brittle-looking and broken. Inside, the walls were gray with soot and dampened and a landline phone still hung on the wall. I am a machine, taking in every detail, remembering each sight, memorizing each sound, creak, and silence. Rose colored glasses could not lighten the scene. A tree, half rotted, hung low over the home. It hung as if to shield it from the too rough fingers around them. The earth was in mourning. The gnarled wood encapsulated the home, and the flowers refused to grow. I saw the scene before me. I saw the door broken down, sirens heard blaring over the horizon. I saw a crowd gather, hushed silence awaiting the outcome. The crowd dispersed. The boards came up. I saw the attempt, but I saw what was left. I know what was gone. Something went wrong .