decades raze i had it all wrong. hell isn't a high_school hallway. it's a house i never lived in. a house i can't find when i'm awake, though i slept in three of its rooms and spent more mornings than i'd like to remember chewing toast that was browned just right and swallowing something steamed and crushed that didn't taste like anything it was meant to mimic. the backyard is a forest overrun with birds. they all share the same face. no music in them. there are three light switches mounted to one brick cheek. they trigger the first few bars of a song that's too far away to tell me anything. anyone could be inside, but today it's her. she doesn't live here anymore. she hasn't lived here in decades. her bedroom is just the way she left it. her mother is gone. all that's left of her is the last number she dialled on a phone fixed to the kitchen wall. i want to hear the last voice she heard, but there's no one there to answer my call. just a grainy recording of a child who must be a man now, so far removed from his innocence he wouldn't recognize it in his own son. i make myself a cyclone and tear through the dust that lines her bedspread. watch it cover the windows and all the walls. i'd blow this whole house down if i didn't have better things to do with what breath i have left. 220312 what's it to you? who go blather from