Looking back, I spent my childhood
surrounded by greenery,
short hikes and treehouse-turned-
suburban sacrifice-
well, we called it that. That
lightning-strike overturned accident
shelled in plywood and wayward nails,
OSHA be damned. We’d tuck ourself away
concealed by a sorry excuse for a canopy
and return by nightfall clothed in
scrapes and bruises, badges of
honor, proof we were still kids.

Do you remember the “construction”?
Bulldozed plains from which a 
neighborhood erupted. Trees 
torn asunder whose skeletons were
used for housing. We’d stand in the rubble
and throw boomerangs as tribute,
watching the fade, the arc, the return,
the five-minute search that followed
as we scoured each scattered upshoot
of grass for another chance at success.

We’d turn them in for skateboards,
keep the change,
the scrapes and bruises,
the snaps and pops of wood
transformed, deformed,
redefined as our surroundings
lost their leaves, their luster,
their lives
as this neighborhood expanded
in a deforestation of definition
where every home became
seperate and unequal 
and every board bought
broken.

I’ve moved away 
in the months and years since,
built an alter to that treehouse
in my marrow,
hoping to venture outward
and search for home.