the_house_is_gone raze i don't know if it was repainted and renovated and my eyes don't recognize the old face beneath the new, or if the world swallowed it up whole, but i can't find it. i've been there, and looked, and seen nothing. i drank orange tang there in the summer and sat on a radiator to warm my ass in the winter. slept on the couch and had dreams within dreams, with the threat of death taking on a strange sexual hue i couldn't understand. watched cartoons in the morning before school and soap operas after. burned my tongue on ham that was too hot and flecked with fat. drank sickly sweet milk that absorbed all the worst qualities of the sugary cereal that sat on top of it and mushroom soup that had gone cold, always under duress. read forgotten books thrown in a cardboard box in a closet. got hit in the face with a round-tipped lawn dart and swelled up like a blowfish. picked raspberries and gooseberries and washed and ate them with vanilla ice cream. slept in the bed of someone i hated and stood mesmerized at their bedroom door lost in the myriad of old garbage pail kids stickers tattooed on the white painted wood. threw a stuffed animal up in the air and watched it take out a ceiling fan. made a flip pen the shape of a swiss army knife into a make-believe harmonica. and more. i still dream about the house, but the house is gone. 170630 ... amy anthropology burnin' down the house. except not-so-much. 170701 what's it to you? who go blather from