84 Little Creek Rd.

I've always had a closet obsession with the old, the broken, the left out to dry, things of earth. Maybe because I am somewhat inclined to feel some level of connection to them seeing as I once was just that. Worn, lost, broken. Feeling abandoned, left out in the dark, all of those heart-wrenching descriptors. Whatever the reason, now I find myself pulling into parking lots of abandoned buildings, houses that once were homes, any old seemingly ugly thing I see, and trying to imagine the beautiful story its tatteredness once held. I like to think of it as child-like curiosity. One that frankly, I'm terrified of losing.

Which brings me to this poem. In Poetry class, my professor has been constantly reminding us just how unintentionally criminal our literature lessons from about 2nd grade to the present day have been to our poetic writing skills. We've been taught that all literature and writing must be read for the purpose of understanding the meaning. That we have to examine and draw out what exactly the author was feeling when they sat down to word-paint. She's basically broken us the horrifying news that as writers, but specifically as poets, no one will ever quite get out of our poems what we intended for them to. Therefore, we've been forced to focus on writing without expectations and intentions. Allow our pens to move and the creativity to flow. Ideas from things and descriptions, not the other way around.

So here's an example of me trying to be objective. Write without thought or anxieties about punctuation, style, format, etc. Just write. And miraculously, by the end, I figured out what I was trying to say all along.

84 Little Creek Rd.

I like old things.

Buildings long abandoned,

shoved aside & nestled in ivy vines

with tarnish & fingerprints masking what once was shining.

Washed out paint that chips away from the walls that might’ve at one time

kept  good posture,

but now they are tired.

Wood panels clinging tight by their left-side nail

and swinging with the wind-gusts on the other.

The people pass by at 5 past noon. Quick with scurry,

 no time to slow to a marvel at the old thing

with which I am so fixed upon.

I keep loving it in all its’ glorious ruin and I find my seat upon

a log of wood hung by a tethered rope.

Not much too fit for mounting, but still I sit and

 I ask 84 Little Creek to tell

me its’ story.

The crumbling stone foundation serenades me

with a narration of the day that a soldier man

surprised Ms. Carter with the very willow tree I now hang from

and I feel like I’m intruding on something lovely, but their long

gone now.

I make my way to the nearest droopy-wall and

he tells me about a canvas painting he once hosted of that

very house itself but Ms. Carter sold that and the rest of her work

when she got the General’s call and decided to move back to Boston.

I can see how the planks of fallen pine once lay and

formed the perfect home for

barefoot children.

And I hear the gentle laugh of a young Ms. Carter

as the soldier man interrupts her kitchen-work with

whispers & she swoons.

But the sun is setting fast now and momma will want

me home for dinner cause’ tomorrow I’ll head

back to where I now stay in the midst of all

things new and perfect.

And the doors won’t creak, they’ll shine,

And the yellows will be far from organic.

Too young to have a story.

And I don’t want to grow up.