The Mortgage.

Poetry helps me think. I don't think when I'm writing it, I just write. My pen speaks from the overflow of my heart and mind and I just read it after I'm done. Without thinking.

The Mortgage.

My house is always clean. Everything has a place, a home. Red cups and blue cups can never touch because they could gossip and bleed purple onto the mason jars. Chunky knitted mustard yellow sweaters are to be folded in thirds and stacked three high like proper Christmas morning pancakes: always the right fluffiness and golden brown. Additionally, my dog is combed every Tuesday on the rear deck over a garbage bag not quite big enough for the secrets of the house only to ensure max cleanliness for the interior side of those french doors. But most importantly, dishes were always washed upon use.

My mother’s home was never clean. Keys had always fallen off tables and into shoes. Cheap hairspray from food banks and hot irons with chemically dyed hair charred into the iron laid intertwined over the sink vanity. The butter from her breakfast toast cascaded from the fingerprint of her chin down the constellations of freckles on her neck, burying itself deep into her collared silk shirt like a deer tick.

But my house had a little monster. My little monster had reared it’s head before now, just enough to make someone question it’s existence, but this time it gnashed it’s teeth. Next time it might completely bust through my eyes which are the windows to the overflow of my heart. It leaves wads of twine-like fur in the hidden stair wells of my house that engrave scratches into the hardwood at the slightest breeze. It drools mucus-like saliva on authentic English linens as it makes itself comfortable, nestling in my house and it knows it’s the alpha.

But my mother’s home never had a monster. Big or little. Still, there were wads of twine-like fur engraving scratches into the hardwood of the stairs and mucus staining the authentic English linens. Only I see no monster.

One morning I wake to see my mother’s home burnt to the ground. No more keys. No dripping butter. No puzzling vanity counters. No constellations. No wads of twine or scratched hardwood floors. Still no monster and I weep like a fragile bully as he’s reminded of the beautiful damage he’s done as I come to realize that I was the little monster in my mother’s home scratching the floors, staining priceless heirlooms, and demanding dominance over the tightest corners that we once shared with each other.

Only now, this little monster has moved on to it’s own home and hides in the shadows of a flesh driven perfection and false happiness of a well groomed dog and red and blue glasses that never bleed purple. Nobody sees the scratches and stains unless I invite them in, but then again, I’ve never been a great hostess, but I could promise to always serve you your pancakes, golden brown.

My mother lived with my little monster and allowed it to destroy the house in order to shape it into a home but we never forgot whose name was written on the mortgage.

R. S. Pittman