When Walls Talk

Stained, blotched, faded

Silent walls, three decades standing

Now heaving heavy of only memories

Housing emptyness

Covering only remnants of everyday living

The leftover matter

Once considered valuable enough to store

Now discarded

Or just waiting for the next truck to fetch them

Walls sheltering no breathing creatures

Just ghosts and lingering scents

Of food and events and human beings

They stand, lonely, lamenting

Mocking me for moving on

After years of faithful protecting

From rain, heat, and bullets of soldiers rebelling

From a world so harsh and ugly at times

From the glare of the sun and scorching truth

From the stench of the city

From the poverty some call reality

They’ve done their best

To be a fortress, a haven, a default safety

Where masks, bras, and pretensions are removed

Where one puts on a bullet-proof blanket of comfort

How dare I leave now

Where is my loyalty?

But they oblige

They shrug shoulders they don’t have

And give in to the inevitable

They say go, go, move one

We cannot stop you from living

After all, you left a long time ago

When you married that man from the south

And the walls envelop me

Forgiving me for leaving

Trying to hide their weeping

But before you go, they say

Let us talk

And I let them

And they talk of a family too eager to move in

Bringing salt and icons in a home filled with dust

And furniture too few that the house shook

Then filling the house with dreams and plans

And stories, not all of them fun

Filling the home with people, even not their own

With all sorts of things and things and things

And things and toys and books and stuff and things

With love and love and love and love

The walls talk

Of new wave parties in the 80s

Of college buddies hanging, chilling

Of sleepovers too many to count

The corners whisper of sins and secrets

Of stealing daddy’s ciggies to learn how to smoke

Of playing hooky and getting a hicky

Of stealthy kisses

And experimental gropings in the dark

Of growing up and throwing up

Of grounded days and loveless nights

Of love or what we thought was love

The walls snicker remembering

Bad fashion and worse music

Of bawling teenagers thinking

That this is the world ending

Of emo moments and bad hair days

And angst-ridden diary entries

Of children hating parents

Who loved us even when they wanted to strangle us

Of two silly brothers fighting over briefs

Killing each other over nothing

These walls giggle about jokes and pranks

And Ogs’s many emergency room trips

The walls cannot count how many nights

A father waited anxiously

Inspecting rooms, doing a roll call

Praying for the safety of those not yet home

Of losing sleep worrying how the hell

He would find tuition for

These lazy, reluctant students

Who only cared about Saturdays

Whose expensive books remained unopened

Of children oblivious to the love

They speak of a mother always screaming frantically

But just us passionately giving all, loving us loudly

The walls confess of hearing confessions
Of people alone in rooms
Of pains shared in the stillness
When nobody else was listening
The walls sing of hidden joys
Of the smiles one hides
Of hearts being punctured
Egos being bruised
Of brothers and sisters fighting
Not talking, pretending not to care
Of love unspoken
Because it's uncool to be sweet to your sibling

The walls hush of family secrets

Of pregnant announcements

And embarrassing separations

Of family dysfunctions we thought

Nobody else had
Of dirty linen kept where they should be

Hidden, forgotten

The walls speak of heart-scarring hurts

And gut-wrenching breakthroughs

Graduations, weddings, birthdays

The walls saw the growing up

Of awful kids transforming into awesome adults

The walls remember
Parties, preparing for parties
Dreaming of parties
Parties that went too far
Of drunken people sprawled on the floor
Of cleaning up after the nights of reverie
The walls will miss
The people
People visiting
People overstaying
But more than anyone,
The people who lived, slept, breathed, dreamed, grew, gave, loved in it

And then the walls grow silent

Remembering a sister

For whom this house is just not big enough

To hold the love

To bear the pain of losing her

And maybe that’s why we have to move

Maybe this is where they outlive their use

This is when they say goodbye

One last hug, one last look

To let us move on for fresher air, for new stories

For more graduations, weddings, birthdays

For more love, love, love, and love

They're just walls
Concrete, immobile walls
But they speak
They witness
They remember
They cry
They confess
They love
They hurt
They die
Those walls did talk

And I am glad I let them