Yellow casita

The little yellow house on the corner sits empty,
the memories it made absorbed by now into its bright, technicolor walls,
the way that an old woman at the market buries herself deep within her broad and colorful shawl.
And silent—it is so, so silent.
The echo of children playing no longer resounds through the casita’s narrow halls.

The house is as empty as me.
I left it in a whirl of triumph and tears.
I said I was claiming dominion over all my fears,
that I would not be stuck in that house and in this town for another several years.
I was finally on my own, I said.
No longer tied down to that modest yellow casita that floods when the summer skies are too generous with their sweet and cooling rains.

I left behind every room and every arched entryway shadowed by a large wooden crucifix nailed above.
I left behind the big backyard and the elaborate teepee that I made out of fallen branches and sticks.
No longer would I walk into the baby blue kitchen that smells like tortilla and cinnamon.
There would be no enchilada dinner with mama at a quarter past six.

Free.
I was free, so I said.
And so I thought.
I moved far away and won that freedom for which I had so vigorously fought.
I would not even have to make my own bed.
And sometimes, to be honest, I did not make my own bed.
But in the mirror every morning all I saw was the manifestation of dread.
And as I looked back at myself and at the yellow house in my mind, I began to feel less free instead.
My friends told me that all of that was just the distraction of nostalgia and doubt in my head.

But memories of that little yellow house turned to dreams that played tricks on my heart.
Revelry replaced what was meant to be a fresh start.
And the allurement of being on my own began to feel more like a trap I laid for myself,
and suddenly it was like I knew where I really ought to be.
I belonged, in the end, to the little yellow casita sitting beneath the towering pinon tree.

I wasn’t really meant to fly,
at least not so far and so high.
My story is written down here, and I thought it was up in the sky.
No, my story seems to be here, in the soil near the wheat and the rye.
I wasn’t meant to leave this casita to die,
and everyone in it to lament and ask why.

But you know how life goes.
You know how easy it is to get caught up in its throes.
to be led around promiscuously by the nose,
by the illusion that you can really outrun life’s ordinary woes.

Some years later I finally came back,
my heart so numb I no longer felt the size of its persistent, painful crack,
the chasm that so easily grows when you’re too busy enjoying the view.
And now the house is a stale, grayish-yellow hue.
And now everything feels strange and new,
when I thought that maybe it would only feel good and true.

The little yellow house was no longer a home,
but a tomb holding memories of a life I had left to go roam.
Maybe I will paint it anew and fill it with fresh memories I make on my own,
or maybe I will put flowers before it and move on with a life I never really began to live.