Yesterday I saw my kids playing house at recess...

The moments when my kids remind me that despite what they have gone through, despite what they have seen, despite the role models that are piled infront of them like the gift of small pox blankets- they are young children, even the oldest are young.

Yesterday these old souls, worn away by an apathetic world, played house at recess. And for a moment, though tortured and confused, they tried to create order and purpose in a world that didn't promise them that and doesn't give what it didn't promise. Yesterday I realized what a responsibility I have again.
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Laughter has no need to echo:

There is this room in the corner of that house after
Which we built ourselves out of
Bumped heads, fights, and laughter.
Where we lost ourselves
In worlds we created just to see if we could fit into them.
Like 2 feet tall, stomping around in Dad’s work boots
Worlds we left the room to test out.
Worlds the room willed us to want.
Worlds that now, though we are bigger
Still don’t seem to jive quite right.

That room is so full of memories that
We don’t fit into it anymore.
There is so little space for the we’s we’ve become
That we can’t even enter there without falling back
Into the we’s we were.

The sun still spends the summers
Lounging on the couch spreading itself out
Into the late afternoons
The beams spread onto the table
Highlighting scars from former memories.
White circles from lemonade glassed
On the coffee table that taught us how to dance
With people watching us.

We talk of remodeling, covering her scars
New paint. Replacing the blinds.
Maybe new pillows not faded by the sun.
We can’t touch it though
It belongs to our memories, the afternoon sun,
And itself.

Now, new cousins play there
(do we resent them for it?)
They are welcomed equally by the room
And it shelters, bolsters, and encourages them as much
Their laughter paints the walls now
And their dreams create forts in its corners.
They now fill it with memories
Of the world they know must exist outside
somewhere
Harldy even aware that this room
was already overflowing with imaginary utopias.
Watching them we know that utopias have
No room for the flawed
Maybe that is really
why we don’t go there anymore.

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