Your Happy Place

I saw a street of old houses today. This isn’t really noteworthy I suppose, all the houses on all the streets are quickly becoming old.

Either broken into, burned up, or simply weathered- It's pretty surprising how little time needs to pass before houses turn.

It was a string of weathered houses this time.

And I don’t know if it was the street, the style of houses, or just something about me, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying.

This one house- I think it was weathered white with peeling red shudders. The colors were almost completely muted from the dust, but here and there you could see what it probably used to be.

It looked nothing like my old home, but somehow it reminded me so much of it.

Of painting the moltings with my father. Of patching the roof, cutting the grass.

Upkeep, he called it.

It was part of what turned my old house into my home.

This was just a house that I was looking at. Maybe not even that. With no tenants maybe it could only be called a building.

Looking at the dust-covered, paint-pealed shudders; I couldn’t imagine it or any of the other buildings ever being called home again.

And so I cried to myself, for myself, for us all.

For we may find places to stay, but will we ever call any of those places home?