this is our house.

On the mouldering façade of the house, the once intricate tracings of ivy have grown into a thick fur.
But even those resilient green tendrils have begun to wither away...

This is our house.
This is where we make a semblance of life.
This is where the atmosphere integrates decaying, whispered confidences with a shivering solitude.
This is where gravestones grow overnight, quietly and effortlessly like ghoulish mushrooms.

We might as well deliberately cultivate weeds in our garden since all that grows there is a poisonous regret that chokes anything else that tries to develop.
{Vindictive thorn pricks with no rose to alleviate the sting.}

The sun shines everywhere but never seems to penetrate the haze we linger in.
All we see of the sunbeams are the shadowed bruises that trail behind them.
{For all our inner fog we might as well live in darkness.}

Ghosts inhabit these walls, to be sure.
We live in a wary submission to the company of these in a phantasmal beings.
{Often I wonder which will crumble first, this house or this family.
And if we were gone... would the ghosts cease to be?}

This is our house.
We live here because we must.
We live here because we cannot forget.

{Picture found here.}