'That House' & 'Leaving': Two Poems by Matthew Little

THAT HOUSE

I keep thinking about that house I saw

on the bus on the way home,

about its awful April foliage

and how it sat quietly as I went by.

How many Aprils have gone by

and dusted its leaves?

I see it as one solidarity, a tinted memory,

a ripple faded in travel.

I never saw it standing still.

I don’t know the trees it leaned against

or the pilgrim of land it occupied

and its people, its family,

I’ll never know how many stomachs laid empty there

or if the owner ever missed any bill payments,

not that that matters any to me.

So then how come I can still see it?

Why does that house of all the houses I’ve seen

and loved and slept in sit like a landmark?

It’s actually a casualty; it passed me by

as fast as I let go of my own reality–

That April means so much more than I let on.

I saw that house with my tail between my legs,

a twenty-three year old pussy personified,

as I left a beautiful boy behind me, confused

and hopeful that the bus would come back around.

I saw the house midway through my trip

probably just as my beautiful boy sat on his bed

for the first time without me.

Maybe he looked out the window and saw something too,

something foreign, something that shouldn’t have been there

and maybe that image haunts him just the same.

Maybe he dies a little whenever it comes back to him too.

But that house, that sepia woodwork,

that place that sits outside of present time,

I’ll live outside of it until days stop turning into nights.

It looks the same all year round.

---

LEAVING

Everything faces opposite

everything else

in passing.

The paths hate footsteps

that don’t know where they’re going.

In pure domination

grass flattens underfoot;

nothing is ever left behind willingly.

---

Matthew Little has been writing earnestly since 2012. Although he doesn't favor writing about one or two specific things, he enjoys fleshing out the realism of whatever situation he takes on with the same amount of grit as if it were taking place right in front of you. He currently lives in his birth city of New Bedford, Massachusetts with his boyfriend and their two cats. Find him on Facebook: @matthew.little.writer, or on Twitter: @itsAnnXiety.