Brooding, it sits like a cataract in the eye,
Invasive, meddlesome and menacing.
Best burn the whole thing down,
and search for fruit in the ashes.
The foundation – the roof,
from root, to stem, to outstretched leaves,
every soul that has crossed that threshold
is now tainted with corruption.
Some say the darkness grew there.
Quiet like a mold you see but hide in shadow,
not looking long enough to acknowledge
until it is the shadow, the texture of the walls.
Those who were alive when it was made;
gestated, and labored over, know,
it was built wrong from the start.
From the first nail in the first beam.
Neighbors windows opened like center stage
on the day they broke ground.
The audience loyal to the production
if only to see what, if anything, grew.
While the crew toiled to bring the place to life,
they fell ill to the architecture;
the very design, a plague on the mind
caking them with madness.
They’d take it home and build it there.
Unspeakable extensions
to the horror on Wilkins Street,
but return all the same.
Visit those horrors again,
or have them visited upon them,
until all their souls were lost,
though not a one found dead.
The teeth of that house have dulled with generations,
yet it still consumes from the inside,
scraping against the skin;
agonizing over the organs.
While all of Wilkins Street is shaped by its pull;
those bright colors and picket fences,
dragged by that darker space
to a place where no light can escape.
Grow Gray With Me 