from Rectify (2014), created by Ray McKinnon

I moved in, and the friendliest neighbor

a House across the road

waved at me, winked

its half-shuttered half-broken eye

and threw in a gut punch:

                  "It's not that you're empty,

                        just abandoned like me."

“And the thing", it continued mindreading,

  "with abandonment -

    is how it's a layer of paint,

                          not the plint

        and we are allowed to keep trying

              re-inventing ourselves,

              re-inviting over everyone else"

Now The House wasn't a home

but even more so stubbornly alive;

it didn't need ligts on

Centuries worth of mismatched ghosts

held their silent parties bright, and

it didn't need laughter

The mob of seagulls living under its roof

took care of that lack

Behind my windows the house kept living

and while I,

a desperately maverick stowaway child

did anything but that -

calling the Grim R. hotline at every hardship

to join the party booming on next door

The House

with infinitely more package

compared to my small lite rucksack

made some tea, sat down, picked up a paintbrush

and painted its walls

All swirls and portraits and pure mess of color,

every stroke alive,

more alive night after night

Sometimes I'd make myself tea as well

and took a seat face to face, kept

company to the old new friend

Or more likely, it kept company for me -

stared back with compassionate calm

and told stories

of its past, its pasts pasts

The now quirky worn-down artist had once hosted

university students, brightheaded burnout promises

and a hundred years ago or so,

nursed back to health

ushered to death

enough epidemic patients to get named after it;

Not a stranger to isolation

                "When you turn sickly distant",

                      The House sighed

        "People tend to prefer building

                      something new,

                          locking up the outdated

                                inside proper frames"

 "They reserve their

            renovation projects

    only for the ones falling apart

                        with grace

                                and when we cry

          after the carriages, the cars

                                  driving away

                              it's all ghastly creaks,

      uncomfortable warnings for them."

I nodded, and stayed at the window

          for another story

One day

our tea got cold, yet

the heat under my fingertips lingers

And later I find a can of paint stored away,

tucked under my cupboard to get used

the proper time,

the proper project

The Atelier

has been buzzing with people since Summer -

people painting, people

gardening together

And it isn't a salvage

but an attempt to gladly co-exist

with the unavoidable rot that comes with a long life

thoroughly lived

From soil to someones soles tramping it

New footprints and new painters

giving life to the deteriorating plaster,

making murals

next to the mural covered stones

And the ghosts still have a ball when it gets dark

but The House

sent invitations, made a call to arms

and to smiles and new stories and a shared peace

And one day, then every other,

every single day

the called came

And I'm almost out the door, somber and late

a paint can swinging on my hand

about to re-forgive life

         to re-greet someone

     "Someone", I admit as I come over

     "in the apartment up there,

         behind my window