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The first break is not the break up; the first break is the broken window on the second floor that we crack when we shut the window too hard on a cold night.
The second break is still not the break up; the second break is the light bulb that goes out suddenly and leaves us in the dark. Two hopeless, frustrated people who grasp things clumsily and stub our toes on the corners of furniture and trip over the piles we've swept under the rug.
The third break is the break up. The whole house is silent, except for the steady dripping of a tap that drives us both crazy.
I move back into my parents' home, admitting we are not ready to live on our own.
But now you unroll the welcome mat again, you trim the hedges that have climbed high over the fences, you dust the windowsills and replace the broken windowpane, you've changed all the lights.
You try to convince me that a house once stripped bare of the pictures on the walls, the footsteps in the halls and the dinner on the table can be a home again. You try to whitewash out the stains and vacuum the carpet but this whole house smells like smoke.
Like a dream lit on fire by two careless children, more in love with the way the fire burned that November than with much anything else. Those two children with burns on their arms, with new scars now.
Two children who aren't quite children. Who don't fit in their childhood beds and have outgrown the swing on the porch.
Who have songs that they can't listen to, other people who they have hosted, other houses they have visited.
Who have outgrown this space—who awkwardly bump into furniture they once skirted easily around in the dark.
Maybe it's time we finally stop trying to fix this place and put it up for sale.
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