The Dirty Old House

The Dirty Old House
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The dirty old house stood older than memory,
its walls having long forgotten the difference
between breathing and surviving.
Sweat, blood and tears were never metaphors—
they seeped into the wood grain
and became the only currency
the earth would accept.

From dark to dark, all day long,
the sun traced the same arc
without mercy, without witness.
And somewhere in that endless turning,
wrong became right—
wrong wore the face of right
so convincingly that even the mirrors
learned to lie.

That same old song, one day too long,
was passed from throat to throat
until the melody became a kind of inheritance.
Generations hummed it into their children's bones,
and no one remembered where it began.

But still—
there was a dream-site-city
painted on the underside of sleep,
a place where the beloved waited.
Not a person, not a name,
but the shape of a world
in which a life could finally belong
to the one who lived it.

The dirty old house still stands.
But every stone fears the moment
when no one answers
this ancient song.