Poetry by Alex Brown
accursed house
white and purple flowers lined
the cracked and sloping driveway.
the architect — the husband — died there.
i looked for his ghost, but he never showed.
not visibly, anyway; maybe he showed
in the way the house shook
like it was built on something hollow.
the tobacco-yellowed walls, the kitchen light that buzzed
and was so ugly i thought it was beautiful.
maybe he showed in the way, for a summer,
i became so obsessed with my blood that spun
around in centrifuges somewhere
in places like san luis obispo
in the way the scent of summer-melted asphalt
mingled with my lavender deodorant — so fourteen years old --
and started to smell like leukemia — these are the things i can’t explain --
my body splayed out on my grandmother’s four-poster bed,
i would’ve carved all those hippocratic designations
into the house if i had been able to find anything sharp enough
years later we sold the house to flippers,
people who would take this shell of a home and make it worth something.
all their intentions spilled out of their mouths --
rip out the wine-colored carpets, the buzzing light, make all the countertops
granite and the walls fresh white like glittering teeth,
like a geode shattered open
the asphalt doesn’t melt in the summer anymore.
they repaved the roads and whatever family they are able
to usher in won’t know everything that i can’t explain
that happened in that house
until all the protection spells
i laid with my cards and candles fade away and it all seeps in
up from the ground like poison.
white and purple flowers lined
the cracked and sloping driveway.
the architect — the husband — died there.
i looked for his ghost, but he never showed.
not visibly, anyway; maybe he showed
in the way the house shook
like it was built on something hollow.
the tobacco-yellowed walls, the kitchen light that buzzed
and was so ugly i thought it was beautiful.
maybe he showed in the way, for a summer,
i became so obsessed with my blood that spun
around in centrifuges somewhere
in places like san luis obispo
in the way the scent of summer-melted asphalt
mingled with my lavender deodorant — so fourteen years old --
and started to smell like leukemia — these are the things i can’t explain --
my body splayed out on my grandmother’s four-poster bed,
i would’ve carved all those hippocratic designations
into the house if i had been able to find anything sharp enough
years later we sold the house to flippers,
people who would take this shell of a home and make it worth something.
all their intentions spilled out of their mouths --
rip out the wine-colored carpets, the buzzing light, make all the countertops
granite and the walls fresh white like glittering teeth,
like a geode shattered open
the asphalt doesn’t melt in the summer anymore.
they repaved the roads and whatever family they are able
to usher in won’t know everything that i can’t explain
that happened in that house
until all the protection spells
i laid with my cards and candles fade away and it all seeps in
up from the ground like poison.
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Alex Brown is an undergraduate Creative Writing student at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She writes creative nonfiction and reported stories and loves queer narratives, illness memoirs, and chai lattes. More of her written work can be found at http://alexbrown.agnesscott.org/published, and she can be found on twitter at @violinwitch.
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