HOUSE ON NORTH ROGERS STREET

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1895: the year it first stood,
a sentinel of walnut and dust,
North Rogers Street humming beneath its porch~
first with hooves, then pistons, now electric cars.

Granddad signed his name on a blank promise,
ink bleeding into faith.
Plumbing crawled indoors like a shy animal.
A garage yawned open.
The roof—oh, the roof~
stretched its spine against decades of hail.

Granny arrived with four shrieking shadows
who grew into echoes in the walls.
My mother’s laughter still lives
in the crack between floorboards,
her childhood a fossil trapped in varnish.

We came later—cousins, brothers~
tracking mud like a second skin.
The house tolerated us,
let us carve our initials
into its patience.

I know the smell of Granny’s perfume
better than my own breath.
Granddad’s slippers whispered
shhh-shhh across the planks,
a lullaby in Morse code.

Dusk on the porch swing:
Missouri spilled its sun like persimmon jam.
Trees dissolved into charcoal smudges.
Then—magic~
the lightning bugs arrived,
trading secrets in flickers.
Granddad called them living embers.
I called them proof.

Inside, the walls hoarded snapshots:
birthdays, Christmases, a thousand untold mornings.
The table’s oak face grew wrinkles,
each scar a story.
Gingerbread men drowned in cocoa,
their vanilla eyes wide with surrender.

Summers brought gardens:
tomatoes fat as fists,
cucumbers crisp as lies.
Granny’s hands, knuckled and sure,
picked them clean for jars of sweetness.

Now the house wears its age
like a favorite coat—threadbare, but still warm.
I press my palm to its siding,
feel the pulse of a thousand suppers,
a hundred storms.

Time won’t rewind.
But here’s the alchemy:
memory is a door
that swings both ways.

Home isn’t just where you sleep.
It’s where you wake up
again
and again
and again.

Accompanying memoir vignette can be read at: poetrysoup.com/short_stories/this_old_house--the_place_we_called_home_13650

12th gradehomehousememoryfree verse

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