Two car garage, two story house, nine windows in the front.

A lawn cut by others; I see you pull into the driveway, run in, then leave again.

What’s in your house? I don’t see anyone else there. Why do you need nine windows? The shutters are drawn; do you even realize that two of them are broken?

When was the last time you were in the room to the right of the door? What is that room filled with? Expensive furniture? Boxes? Nothing? What is your house to you?

Have you ever made it a home? Are the boxes that fill the second garage full of good memories? Or just of stuff that you can’t let go? Will those items ever make it out of those boxes?

Do you have a family? I’ve never seen visitors. Are you waiting for somebody to knock, somebody from your past that you miss, to reintroduce themselves so you can show them how far you’ve come? To show them the house that’s been waiting for them to make it a home? Do you still miss them, after all these years?

When you trot upstairs to go to bed, do you stare at the same wall I do, thinking about how you’d like it to be a different color but putting it off until things get better? Can you fall asleep with all that silence?

When you find yourself with nothing to do in the morning, do you go into your fenced yard? What in there do you admire? Have your hands ever been calloused from tending to a garden that I cannot see from across the street?

Do you take pride in your house, well-maintained and in a good location, or do you use those walls as a prison, boxing yourself in like all of your stuff in the garage?

Will you ever unpack those boxes? Will you ever fill each room of that house with the warmth of a home? Will that day ever come?

Or is it all too late? Is your true home elsewhere?

Are you as lonely as the rest of us?