My friends and I live
in old houses. Old houses with peeling rooftops
and in the summer, we sit on them
after dark. Sunburns shrivel and fall away in the wind. We pass
around a travel-sized bottle
of aloe vera. Our feet kicking up black bits of asphalt
—sometimes whole shingles slide down
into the side yard, into the garden, the driveway,
the back patio. We used to stargaze, but the sky
is so polluted now. My friends and I live in old houses
and none of the doors lock. The paint
is chipped. Stairs creak, voices drift through hollow walls
and warmth is not what it used to be—
we were sitting on the roof when the house on Halstead
burned. Like a bruised peach or a funeral.
It was raining but the fire didn’t care. When it rains we sit
in our basements. Some of them are refurbished
but we don’t like those. They’re too mundane. Beige rugs
and our fathers’ ellipticals in the corner. We like
basements with pipes unveiled, with shaking machines
and a garage that smells like pennies and soil
and sawdust. We like old houses with ancient backyards
with well pumps and birdbaths. Yellow tulips. We burn
old furniture in an old fire pit, watch aluminum handles melt
into the grass. The house on Halstead had crown
molding and a knocker shaped like a lion that melted and left
a puddle on the owners’ welcome rug. Home
SWEET Home. Old houses. Old gimmicks. Dry humor
makes dry kindling, and the wood burns
like my skin. Like my friends’ skin. Red, angry, in the dark
ash flies away with the breeze. We all smelled
the smoke, my friends and I. And we remembered that old houses
burn quickly. That wood cracks and flames spread
and that the hallways are much too narrow for our brackish bodies.
Samantha Haviland is a high school senior at Interlochen Arts Academy. Their work has been published in the Interlochen Review and recognized nationally by Scholastic.