Shifting Bricks, Plaster and Paint

A house. A house with green night lamps
and an orange cupboard and a bunch of
nasty crows who cawed and cawed and
crawled underneath the rusty grills like
dark snakes slithering into dingy holes.
My red basket full of toys; toys nineteen
years old and semi-rotten and broken and
cracked. Cracked like my grandfather’s
tooth after an accident when he was twelve.
The house—almost colourless and impossible
to describe to the delivery boy carrying
Amazon parcels as the white and green
was stained beyond repair or polish.
Blue paint on the bedroom walls covered with
a layer of peach, and pink covered with yellow.
At night my eyes would hallucinate about
the blue and pink that peeped from within.
Nineteen years and perhaps a fortnight later,
my house then had an orange night lamp
and the Amazon parcels lay right at the door;
no walls changed colours at night and no
crows cawed or crawled or slithered like snakes.
Grandfather’s cracked smile was left behind
within the bricks, plaster and paint of
the colourless house with a green night lamp.