Christmas doesn’t come here anymore

Christmas doesn’t come here anymore. Neither does Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July or a five year old little boy’s birthday. Nothing comes here anymore. Nothing comes to this charred skeleton of what used to be a house in the middle of what used to be a neighborhood. There are no neighbors now. There haven’t been any for years. Children played here once. There was a time when you would have heard the sound of summer sprinklers and you would have seen folks sitting in the shade on the porch sipping ice tea. There was a time when you would have smelled leaves burning by the curb on the street and glanced up to see a chimney puffing on cold winter nights. Nothing comes here anymore. See, this charred bag of bones used to be a home. It used to be somebody’s dream. There was a time when this is what a young man would have been talking about when he promised his young bride that someday they would have…a home of their own. See that torn piece of wallpaper there in what was probably the dining room? Once upon a time, when it was new, someone proudly looked around that room with their hands on their hips and wallpaper glue on their shoes and said…”Perfect!” And once upon a time it was. Lives were lived here…first steps were taken and last words were spoken. But Christmas doesn’t come here anymore.