Forlorn it stood,
standing erect.
Like a hunchback, crooked.
It’s meek noise, a creak.
Through hail, through sun,
coronation and revolution.
In a backyard, indifferent
it stood.

A toddler grappled on window bars.
The house was refurbished, driveway tarred.
Its nuts and bolts scattered deep in dust.
Its weary body drooped,
but it stood.

The child swings on its rusty hinge,
toothed metal protruding.
Mothers yell and fathers cringe,
“Poke her eye out, It will!”
The child kicks and broods,
alone it stood.

The original house is gone,
and so are the people.
Debris of rooms torn.
Ivy on a steeple.
A blanket of green moss,
on everything once posh.
But Ho! There stands,
that rusty creaking wretch,
sole remnant of a childhood.
The gate still stood.

by Shahin Imtiaz