Sure,

I walked out on you. I chalked my own path.

I crossed the barbed wires. And made my own hearth.

Yes,

I left you all alone. Not once did I turn.

That doesn't mean that my heart doesn't burn.

And,

I made you cry, feel very bad.

I apologize. I'm sorry for that.

I know,

I ran away, made your heart ache.

But all I did was for your sake.

Yeah,

I missed out on you and missed you a lot.

Remember my girl, Daddy never forgot.

Look,

Life hit you hard and I hit you too.

I broke your heart but Daddy loves you.

And darling dear,

It slow kills me, poisons me here,

That you grew up and I wasn't there.

Note for the readers: I generally do not explain what I write, but this is something I wrote from my father's point of view... And I wish I am correct, hopefully. He left when I was a kid and came back after a few years. My Mom and I, we both lost a lot in that span of time. I'd probably never forgive him for that, but well, I guess, love teaches you to accept. I personally think he is sorry. He tries to be a father and I try to be his daughter.. And maybe he regrets? I don't know.

When only one

parent visited

me in the hospital

and said, your mother

and I are getting a divorce

only then

did I cry

tears of joy

for my father

and myself

Who am I you ask

Your guess is as good as mine

Does anyone actually know who they are?

Okay, fine I’ll give it a try…

Who am I?

I am the person in the background,

The one you rarely notice.

I make you laugh with my jokes

If only for a moment.

You come to me with your issues

But never seem to have time for mine.

I’m the person who picks up your pieces

When you’re broken in two.

I put you back together and hold you up high.

You stand on my shoulders

And can touch the sky.

But with each passing day my shoulders grow weak

I start to crumble into pieces

And they blow away with the wind.

But you don’t help me find my pieces

Like I do for you.

Who am I?

You may never truly know,

But you can count on me always

Because who I am is loyal and loving

To all those I hold.

Why,

after all these months,

are you still after me?

There is nothing of you

I want to see

on my phone.

I don't want your apologies,

I don't want your imploring for forgiveness,

I don't want your shallow attempts to rebuild

what was never there.

Without you, I was drifting into a life

without a goddamn care.

And here you are.

Again.

I don't want to become your best friend

I don't want to be your savior to defend

I don't want to extend my hand and let it lend.

And I know, you covet for that.

Your insatiable desire to become everything you think I need and want

are the same things that stab you like malevolent taunts.

The acknowledging that you'll never get there.

And the knowing that I'll never be pleased

or content

or at least ecstatic

with anything you try and do for me.

This is unbelievable, and I never would have believed it if I hadn’t been a part of this. Just fair warning.

A family friend owns a vacation house in the middle of the woods. I’ve stayed there three or four times before, and I’ve always felt there was something off about the house. I feel like it is the kind of house where there would be a treasure hidden inside, and I’ve looked, but never was able to find anything.

I stay in a bedroom in the basement with floor to ceiling windows and three beds. Last summer, we were staying with the family who owns the house and the owner casually asked, in passing, if we had any weird dreams in that room.

I said no, but my brother mentioned that the last time we had stayed there, he thought he had seen a woman’s face in the reflection of a lamp near his bed. I remember dismissing him and saying he was crazy, just to go to bed.

The owner raised her eyebrows. “Well,” she said, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I think that room is haunted.”

My brother and I exchanged a look and asked her to explain.

She started with the background of the house. It was built by a multimillionaire textile designer named Eve. Eve was in her sixties and had married a man named Jim, who was eighty or so.

Now Jim had a thing for marrying rich women who mysteriously died soon after..... and Eve was his fifth wife or so. Shortly after they married, they built this house together, and then she died. Jim sold the house, and everything in it, to my friend.

Eve was somewhat of a wordly woman, with strong opinions. She traveled the world and collected many things, many of which ended up in the house, and is still in the house today.

The owner of the house says she frequently talks to Eve, as she believes that she is still in the house. And she has good reason to.

Multiple people have stayed in the room, never talking to each other, but almost all have reported smelling a woman’s musty perfume during the night. One man claimed to have felt the presence of a woman standing over him in the middle of the night, and ran upstairs, screaming. Another said the scent of perfume was always lingering in the room every night. The owners never told any of the people their suspicions, though.

Eve also liked to mess things up. She had woven baskets from different countries up high places, and the new owner put some of her own cheap baskets up with them. Eve apparently did not like this, as she was somewhat of a worldly snob, and the owner would often return to the empty house to find that the cheap baskets had been knocked down onto the ground, and Eve’s baskets were left untouched.

Eve also left behind things. One day, the owner was alone and getting ready for company to come stay in the house. When she couldn’t find any sheets for the bed, she exclaimed aloud in frustration, “Eve, I don’t suppose you have any twin sized light brown duvet covers, do you?”

The next cabinet she opened, which she had opened a million times before that day, had three packages of brand new, light brown, twin sized duvet covers.

Another day, she was working out of the house, alone again. She was looking for a pen, but couldn’t find one anywhere in the house. She asked Eve for a pen, opened a drawer, and found a brand new box of ballpoint pens.

There were many more things she listed, but those would take too much time. Right after she told us these stories, I thought it was just a strange coincidence, until I was looking for a book five minutes later. I decided to ask Eve for it, as a joke, and was shocked when the book was on a shelf right next to me when I turned around, a shelf that I had checked over ten times before.

Shocked, I didn’t think to mention it, thinking I was going crazy. But my mom was visiting with us; and she had seen the whole thing.

She mentioned that her brother, my uncle, has always been able to talk to the other side.

The owner of the house begged her to contact my uncle and find out if he could communicate with Eve, in order to find out if Eve was happy with their family being in the house. If not, they were thinking about selling the house, as it was getting to be too much work, but they had not told anyone this yet.

My mom texted my uncle and said simply, “What do you get if I tell you a woman’s name..... Eve?”

He wrote back a few minutes later, “Do you want to know about the house?”

(Mind you, my uncle had no idea where we were, nor anything about this house. Just Eve’s first name.)

We were screaming. It was late at night, and we were sitting in the living room with floor-to-ceiling windows.

My mom wrote back, Yes.

He wrote back, “Eve says she has been at the house for quite some time now. He also texted back shortly, “She says to be careful in the creek.”

This house is situated on a creek, probably twenty feet across; and many people play and fish in the creek. The owner said that Eve had been very nervous about her grandkids in the creek, according to Jim.

The conversation went on like this for a while, with my uncle giving more spot on information, such as the fact that Eve was a textile designer. He also mentioned a barn, and the house is made of reclaimed barn wood, each piece picked for perfection.

Eventually, we decided just to call him. My mom had the phone and was acting as a mediator, listening to what he was saying and reporting it back to us, in case he said something horrible. We didn’t know what he was going to say.

At one point, he drew an accurate picture of the front of the house, where he has never been before or even seen pictures. He said he could see it in his head.

He said he could see a horse and a duck-like creature. We looked up and realized that there were statues of horses and a swan sitting in the living room with us. They were there from Eve’s travels.

He also asked “Where’s the cat? Where did it go?” He was referring to a cat statue that used to sit on a table, facing the creek, but Jim took it with him. We told him this and he asked which way it faced: towards the water?

He kept repeating two numbers over and over, which we realized were the date of the owners daughters wedding, which happened right by the house.

Eve had gone to Paris and seen a door on a bakery she liked, so she bought it and put it as the pantry door. It had a pig on it.

My uncle asked if there was an element from the French countryside, then said, .....“a pig?”

(I told my friends this story in a public place, and as soon as I said the word pig, the lights went out. They came back on, but about ten minutes later, I said it again, and they went out again, and stayed like that for about twenty minutes.)

The most memorable part of this was when my mom gasped and suddenly started crying. We asked what was wrong and she said, “She said you can’t sell the house or her memory will be forgotten. You have to keep the house.” No one knew but them that they were thinking of selling it.

My uncle also kept saying that the house held secrets, and that we hadn’t even scratched the surface of all the discoveries. He kept talking about all the things to discover. He mentioned an attic: the house doesnt have an attic that we know of. However; we later discovered blueprints that had the words ”secret attic” on them. We also found a trapdoor in a small room under the stairs, but it was empty. No one knew it was there, however.

He said many more things (I think the tally was up to thirty three) but a lot of them would be hard to explain without you seeing them.

By the time we got to bed, it was past midnight, and we were reluctant to return to the room where it had all started. However, nothing major happened for the rest of the trip, but believe me or not, I know I will NEVER forget this.