Shorts and Curlies

Another draft before I lose the paper

You could see it as a spring clean.

Each building a powerhouse of memory

still stinging with the shock - 

it’s newly whitewashed walls standing

too stunned to talk.

The taste of paint thick in your throat - 

you glance inside,  feel the press of

closed unfamiliar space.

but

someone, here, once carefully overturned

soil, made do, tilled and tidied their

allotted square of land

allowed unspoken flowers to take root

and, not once asking them to be anything more, loved them

gazes were won and lost from this window

battles won and lost on the thresholds of these rooms

Once, this must have meant everything.