PREVIOUS TENANTS
Rough hands, inherited language
A childhood not chosen, but carried,
paid for in increments —
3.99, due monthly, due always.
We learned to speak by repetition,
to name what hurt,
to price what couldn’t be fixed.
There were tools.
There were instructions.
There was always something leaking.
I was told:
if you work long enough,
if you cut carefully,
if you hold the beam just right,
wood becomes structure,
structure becomes shelter,
shelter becomes proof.
But proof of what?
There were questions we weren’t meant to ask out loud.
There were answers that arrived already exhausted.
Who taught you how to live like this?
— We watched.
Did you ever want something else?
— Quiet.
Does the work end when the house is finished?
— It only changes names.
What do you do when the cost is memory?
When the payment is time?
We learned how to stand straight
by watching others bend.
We learned responsibility
before we learned choice.
Twenty houses stood in a row,
each with a story trimmed to fit.
You could see the roofs.
You couldn’t see past them.
Somewhere between labor and inheritance
the language hardened.
What was once care became expectation.
What was once survival became tradition.
I asked myself
if this was construction
or just repetition with better tools.
There were moments —
brief, splintered —
where something softer tried to speak.
It didn’t last.
I don’t blame the house.
I don’t praise it either.
I built what I was shown how to build.
I carry what I was given to carry.
And still,
when the lights go out,
and the roofs block the sky,
I wonder:
what was lost
so this could stand?