back home

we used to have reunions at the farmhouse

i am back home

broken car, no job
i am back home

the reunion would have been,
HAD to have been today
it always rained all day

i am back in the attic of
the farmhouse
the smell of wet bedrock
and cool humid air on my skin

it is 1986, before it all fell apart
Heather, Hannah, and Laura and I
are watching lightning streak across the gray, day sky
cascading the roof of the red barn
tangling with the the lone willow

later on, the sun will break
and all the family will re-emerge from the farmhouse
we will roam amongst strange, familiar, smiling faces
our kin
who stop to tell us who we are, and who are parents are
in slow, teaching voices

it's only a short number of years later
and the farmhouse, with it's sickness, has been quarantined
boxed up and put away
the reunion is somewhere else, maybe
but not here
even though i am back home