Built from the ground up is a place called home. Its walls are weathered brick and newly painted wood. Home is by definition where one presides and feels safe; we all have our own home. A skeletal structure of coarse wood and glue is what makes up our place called home. Strength in its simplicity is enough to keep your house standing. Layer upon layer of bricks and stone, the beginning of your life starts to form. Days, months, years pass, it withstands Mother Nature.  A weather beaten giant amongst its fellow peers; they stand tall together forever. It’s a print in a memory, a place of nostalgia.

Black shingles lined like soldiers prepared to fight a storm that may come to prowl upon your house. The green shutters thrown wide open when sunlight comes to converse with the flowers and the greens of the place. Cotton candy sunsets color the sky a pink and purple color as the sun sets behind the place of love and gratitude. Wild onions and pesky crabgrass pepper the ground with childhood memories. My mother bended over to grasp them from the ground before they could dare grow another root. Weary of their elongated undoing, few flowers venture to peep their heads from the fertile ground. All around the home are towering, colossal trees that shade the evil and the frightened. Mini meadows of tiny purple flowers grow in the Georgia red clay. When the heavens send their disapproval, the backyard is a river. Red puddles with filmy sediment spot the rocky soil that splits in two at the midway point. One backyard split obscenely into two different landscapes of rocky red clay, and long waving grass.
Outside is just like any other, but inside is a symphony hall of clinks and clatters. Popping rice composes an impromptus sonata of its own with the harmonizing sizzle of the garlic. The hum of the oven and the beeps of the microwave make the house come to life from within. Up and down runs the dog and child inside who can’t burn enough energy in one day. Home glows like a jack-o-lantern with its flickering lights disturbed by something inside. Hours pass and the lights don’t cease to cast their light on everything. Walk into the rooms of this place called home and you will see the stains of infancy and ignorance. The worn wooden floors show a story of sliding socks and bright days. Sunlight fills the house with its rays of life and warmth through all the windows. Scattered across the floor are squeaky toys and tennis balls that roll precariously close to your feet. Love and hate, it’s what all homes are filled with, but love is always the strongest. Where else to hide but the place where your memories are; your heart is amongst the decorations that style the walls of the red brick house. Home is a safe-haven for people who run away from reality’s open arms. Run to safety, run to family, run to home.