Prayer in the Quiet Morning of a House Well-Loved, Well-Lived | Gibson Bartlett

Cold toes on creaky stairs tiptoe into an abandoned site

where sunlight greets the ghost of a frivolous freedom.

On a stained couch where laughter echoes our brother’s

smooth smiles made monstrous and precious by a thing we called joy.

By the smell of pizza grease and regret, I am made new.

This is not the place where younger tears spilled on plush carpets.

This is not the time when we were broken and bruised by assumed songs.

Silence is brushed with a deep groan and a smoker’s cough.

A mourner reminisces on the lingering smell of weed.

Beer cans, like tiny soldiers, pepper the carpet curling at its corners.

Have you ever felt so wrong, so misunderstood?

We soak in the bath of conquest and our younger selves’ admiration,

though at its heart is a little boy’s discontent:

from when he once knew better

from when he once felt clean

I could sit in this room a while longer

before bombshells cycle through the cracked door once again.

Here, I am a broken person wanting to be made whole,

king of the empire which does the breaking.

Love is a fear made beautiful.

Home is a mess made holy.

Gibson is a student at Harvard College studying English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies. He is a Queer Appalachian Poet, Essayist, and Standup Comic whose writing speculates and experiments with identity, place, and love.