Restoring a house is scary Scarier than what you find crawling up between the floor boards I was scared the first time the wood rotted through When there was no money for school I was trained as an academic And that still wasn't enough I did not martyr myself in my admissions essay I did not throw myself at the feet of the kings of the admissions board What the hell was I supposed to do? I patched the hole with wood putty Before I could replace the whole board. Got a degree from the community College Realized it was stronger than the wood I would've been able to afford. I fell in love And the front porch was soon replaced As I followed a boy And found an Alma mater in his place. He did not last like the window glaze Adorning all the window panes The relationship cracked and crumbled So I scraped it away Tried to save the spiderwebbed panes At first believing there was still something worth saving But now I know when a window breaks It is better to replace the glass Seal up the hole in my heart Make the house more efficient than it was at the start. I am fixing up this old house Even if her skin is only 22 years old Her knees ache And her joists creak with ever step on the old wood floors Some days I can see the beauty Of what she could be And others I wonder if this is a failed investment Or a waste of a degree. A part time job For a part time adult Volunteering is just working for free Loving the work but not the pay. I wonder if this is it The hard scramble of forever dependency Like I did when I was 18 And couldn't afford to go away Wondered if I would ever finish this degree Or become a sad bless her heart Is this all there can be? Will the house still fall into disrepair Be sold off and demolished With only a memory of what promise was there? It was never too much work to fix up This old house To replace the floor Sweep out the dust But it is what I fear That this army of one can only do so much even if day by day week by week I rip off old siding and nail on the new Simply scrubbing the cobwebs out of the corners breathes life into this old house Even as the paint peels the plaster walls refuse to shake The tiled bathroom floors don't crack because old houses are not weak even if they take time to find their beauty become the product of a marathon instead of sprint It might not be today but someday soon there will be more than a part time underemployed overeducated girl wondering if there ever was more.
