Derelict house

I watched as the sweet shimmer of moonlight poured through the canopy of the forest, enlightening my vision. For the first time, I’m seeing the woeful side of nature. I wanted to take a night stroll, thinking about what makes one love. I realized how vulnerable and secure the heart of the forest can be. But nature can manipulate you into feeling welcomed into another world. Welcomed to a world of tranquility. Little do many know that it can be the one to scare the shadows of the dark, making them run back home.

Home.

Many define it as a place where you are secure and safe, but they are wrong. You can feel safe anywhere, but you can never call it your home. A home is not where you are from, it is where you belong. Where you are wanted.

Even though I became a threat to nature, curiosity took control and I took one step deeper into the heart of the forest. The trees created a comforting and amicable shed, giving off a sense of security and seclusion. They stood tall, arrogant and unyielding, as if they were soldiers protecting their land. They seem far more experienced than I am. They’ve seen the trauma that many run from and yet they still grow. But their branches shot up, as if warning me to go back. The land of evergreen brings forward the perfect epitome of life. Whatever one may do, consequences will be faced.

Peculiarity got me to a place. A place where laughter and happiness once lived. A place where one can feel loved. A place where one can be buried with agonized trauma. A place where secrets hide behind one's shadow of both the living and the dead. A place called home.

A house.

A derelict house.

I was astonished by the way nature had tried to cover it up. The rhythmic vines danced and twirled around to the melody of the howling wind like the ballerinas in a music box.I looked around the perished house. The ambience was manipulatively quiet and my mind teemed with lacerating memories. Everything about the house felt so familiar. The defective door cried for help. The window that breaks when the moonlight enters lies there, broken. Children's laughter is embedded in the ground where the flowers bloom. My heart lies somewhere in this house. I felt it calling to me, so I entered, leaving the door open for the shadows to escape freely.

As my eyes scanned the place, I stopped dead as I saw a picture frame lying lacerated and broken apart on the ground. A picture of a happy family.

My happy family.

My tears spoke up for me. I tried to reminisce about feeling loved but instead, remembering the forgotten merry moments and memories teemed in my mind. Behind every family portrait, lies secrets that want to be forgotten but the present depends on one’s past.

My past.

Secrets lie in this house. I’m just one step closer to the truth. To the traumatizing past.

But is it worth opening a door that I’ve closed?