I am here, in an open field. An overgrown road leads to me, but those who come to me cut across the field, forming a path all their own; a newer, younger path, from the newer, younger homes.

  The front door, warped and crooked, needed to be hit hard to open. “Jesus, what a dump.” The boy and girl slowly walk around the inside of me.

  I watch her looking at my insides; she slowly spins and sees the stairs and the large bay window set in the wall at the top. There are wires hanging from the ceiling, and the girl stares at them.

  “Wow,” the girl says, and then whispers, looking from the wires to the sloped ceiling and then to the rest of the entranceway, “so beautiful.”

  “Maybe one day it was,” the boy says, glancing briefly at my discolored walls, the ceiling which is cracked, and then to the floor around the front door where weeds had begun to grow inside me. “Come on, check out this view,” the boy says, and they make their way up my stairs. The boy tells the girl to watch her step and then they move across the loft and into the master bedroom. They move to the windows and stand there and look out the back of me, to the river and the setting sun.

  The boy and girl are silent; they hug and kiss in the fading light. They lie down on a blanket and talk and laugh and then they grow quiet.

  In the distance around me the water floats by, the trees move occasionally in the breeze, and the other houses in the distance stand with their backs to us.

  As the days and nights go by more people come. They say it’s warm, and they pull boards from my windows to let the air in. They spend their time upstairs, laughing and talking. They talk about their dreams – tell each other their wishes – and they talk about a love that can last forever and I am filled with their voices. In rooms that are empty now their voices are there still, everything they talk about is everywhere inside of me. I listen to them and their words soak into my walls and floors and ceilings.

  I am filled with things that can be, with possibility.

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  The clouds come in and it rains, or snows, or hails, or just the wind blows, and all of these things change me. The cracks in my walls and ceiling open wider; when it rains, now, the rain falls right into me.

  I am empty, and am the only one who hears these things.

  The people come to me, but no one goes upstairs. They say that I am haunted. This makes the boys and girls move closer together, and they grow quiet and I watch the animals playing outside, running around me and the few trees that remain move in the breeze.

  When I think of the secrets and dreams that are shared inside me, I can see them, all of them, living and moving inside of me.

  (“Wow,” the girl says, and then whispers, “so beautiful.”)

  I think about the two lovers who came to me late one stormy night and while he held the girl, the boy whispered that he loved her, and with tears in her eyes she said the same in return.

  Another boy told a girl that he would grow up someday and get rich and come back and make me their home and fill me with the voices of their family. I can see them walking around me, showing each other where the furniture will be, what their routine will be like when they come home from work. I can even see the people walking around the upstairs as they talk about getting away, growing up and being different than their parents. I can see the people who are afraid to go upstairs as well, so they stay on the ground floor; they talk, and are quiet, they move around and they lay on blankets, they hold hands and they kiss.

  These are my thoughts, my ghosts, my memories and my friends.

  The animals run from the sounds of the machines, they run out of me and away from me and I watch them go. The animals run but soon the running turns to play and I watch them play.

  I hear the machines and I feel them as they move, shaking the ground, closer the machines come but I do not look. A group of men stand between the machines and me.

  “Jesus what a dump,” one of them says.

  I am hit hard. I am leaning. I can’t see the animals, and I can’t see the river. I am hit again and I fall. I feel the ground shake and everything inside of me breaks and shatters and everything comes to pieces. I feel the dreams and hopes spill out of me and I hold onto them for as long as possible, the last one eventually fading away – nothing more than a whispered dream of the young.