Making a home

I'd been mulling this over for a few days, then something clicked on my way to visit my son and grandchildren.  It's annoying when phrases come to you when you're driving along a busy A road, but fortunately they are used to me scribbling notes frantically after I've parked, and during conversations! 


Making a Home

The fair haired girl has waited
through rounds of dates,
the passing of chocolates and nuts,
while aunts and uncles exclaim
over sets of Avon talc and soap,
socks and ties, 
until - at last - it's time for her parcel
to be pulled from beneath the tree. 

The colourful wrapping - 
sealed with care in the dead of night
scant hours before -
rips open, falls to the floor:
"I got Lego!"
Her excitement caught on cine
will make the family laugh
for decades to come.

Her dad shows her how to build a house
overlapping the bricks for strength
saving smaller ones to fit round
the window frames,
how to overlap the sloping roof tiles. 

No one can know the hundreds of houses
she will make between now and adolescence, 
or her dad's constant reconfiguration
of the house they sit in:
the chimney breasts knocked out
the walls knocked through
the new kitchen built on the back.

On this Christmas day
her small hands sift through
the heap of red, white, and grey;
the brittle tinkle 
the sound of possibility. 


© Copyright 2026. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved

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