The Abandoned Homes

The lawns are untidy, leaf-littered,

bits of toys and garden tools scattered

all around. The ground is weedy, seeds

of unwanted things still hanging, in need

of attention, a thing they cannot find.

Windows made opaque by curtains or blinds,

or sometimes just dirty sheets nailed

up to hide the fact that they’ve failed,

to cover their secrets and lies, their things to hide

from the careless world that waits outside.

These are the homes of the never-had, the ones

whose dreams have gone bad and beliefs are long gone,

whose hopes were abandoned at the school gates,

where the miseducation that they got from the state

gave them just enough learning to understand why

they would never amount to a thing, so they try

to live in a way that will give them some fun,

or at least in a way that will leave them numb

to the opinions of others. They don’t even care now,

they see all these rich cows,

the ones who had chances

the ones without debt, the ones with finances,

they see them and their homes with their neat

little gardens and fancy nice cars and sweet

little children and they look in the mirror

and they sit back and wonder

‘how on earth did we get here,

just how did we get here?’

These are the homes of the abandoned.

I am not one of them.

I am not.

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First published December 2019