Can you see these bones and imagine them as the boards
that held this old house together? Can you look
closely through these eyes and see the glass that
used to hold out the cold?  The curtains, tattered
but still dancing in the breeze that leaks through?
Can you make out the outline of your own hand in the darkness
inside me? I wait for you to turn on the light
and paint the shadows out of these corners. 
There are times I swear if I shut tight my doors
and lock the windows against the silence, I can just
barely make out the sound of your footsteps
or the echo of your laughter down my hallways.
Have you felt me wonder about what purpose a lock would
serve if the handles are broken?  What use is a door
if there aren’t feet to walk through it?
I am empty and my foundation is sighing with the weight
of all the life being lived outside my walls.  Still
I stand and wait.  The heat stays on and the bed
remains ready and I will always smell like home.
No matter how long you are away, no matter what
you see and what other floors your bare feet find
themselves walking across, no matter how many moments
are spent shaking against the winds and counting the
raindrops on my rooftop, no matter how the plants that
live between these walls wither and stretch for the sunlight
that forgets to come, I will always be here, as I’ve
always been here.  You do not need to curl your hand into
a fist and you will never need to knock.  I will let the
wind blow through me and pull the door wide open
in reverence to your presence on my porch again. 
Bones as boards and whispers as blood and if these
walls could talk they wouldn’t whisper at all, they’d scream
and weep and laugh and throw air out of their lungs
like they’ve no taste for it at all.  They’d tell
stories, our stories and they’d tell them to anyone
and no one and the ghosts that float by outside
in the stillness before morning officially begins.
Do you miss me, these humble bones and rickety rooftops,
this sighing foundation and leaf covered grass? Know that
I miss you and scared to realize just how much a home
becomes a house when you’re not sleeping inside it.
I am here and waiting because the very opposite is even
more abundantly true.
I am an empty house, and I am waiting for you
to come back home.
-Tyler Knott Gregson-