Punctuation

There is a Home

I want to live in a yellow house when I grow up,

retire into my old age with a grey, feather hat 

and wrinkles around my eyes like footprints in the sand,

showing all of the laughter

and the smiles 

and the happiness that lead up to me now

through this teary-eyed world. 

All with a soft-nighted cat whose emerald eyes shine like stars

and a man whose favorite flavors of life are my lips

and caffeine as gloomy as our critter's coat. 

I want a garden to captivate the foundation

in God's grace and warm love, 

the glorious songs of His creation our only alarm clocks. 

I want vines to climb the house, 

embrace it and its pieces in the company of nature's vigor. 

I want the shrill magic of baby giggles

to drown out the whispers of silence within our walls, 

as we play hide and seek for the thousandth time that hour. 

I want a sturdy kitchen with a view,

overlooking a swing set built for four

and a sunny yellow slide to accompany our home's complexion. 

I want an abundance of windows in every room. 

So our little ones will never have to wonder what happens when it storms. 

To allow them an opportunity to welcome all lightning, 

to embody its relationship with good ole mister rumbles

as we call him. 

Seize this opportunity to watch panes of glass fathom themselves into waterfalls. 

And on the sunnier days, 

when all of the clouds look like unicorns and puppies, 

or they abandon the sky completely in its purest saturation of blue,

we can sprawl out in the middle of any of these candid rooms

and bask in the nectar of the allure of light. 

I want the comfort of arms around me, 

the pleasure of sharing cold sheets 

until they are summery sentiments of two people who proved to be one. 

I want hallways lined with happy wrinkles in time, 

captured for our eternal benefit...

burned into our minds and our hearts

through that steady routine of seeing them every day, 

so often that we have adapted to their exclusivity. 

Their individuality. 

We forge feelings, forge expressions

for those moments we often forget

will never happen again. 

I want to live in a yellow house...

one without disaffection written in the infrastructure, 

one without deprecation being the basis of its existence. 

One without fissures and schisms and suitcases. 

One with only one foundation, 

one set of the same keys, 

with identical mountains and valleys in their metal. 

I want a house that is home, 

a place where it doesn't matter whether it is raining

or rainless;

where there are windows regardless. 

Where even when there isn't a building standing, 

there is a home.