if my heart were a house

Inspired by this poem.

If my heart were a house

There aren't any birds to wake you up in the morning but the sunrise and sound of dogs running across the hardwood floor seem to do the trick. It smells like that apple pie I got from the farmers market and a bath with candles is always ready. It has a Cheaper By the Dozen chaos to it and enough people to match. There is always company. The yard has a giant willow tree in the front, with all my pictures and passed notes and movie tickets hanging from its branches. And the lawn is be covered in bike crashes and and memories and bad dance moves because I can't keep it all inside. There is a room in the basement filled with pillows for the hard times and a room stacked with books for when you're ready to get back up and learn from it all. The bedrooms are always messy. Fresh flowers on all the tables and fresh fruit stockpiled in the fridge. A front porch swings all the way around the house and it has creaky rocking chairs that you made for me and ice lemonade that I made for you. a room with all the scraped knees and broken china and mud tracks, and room where He's fixing it all. The dog is buried in the back. And so is the other one, and the fish, and the sister, and the friend, and everyone else. Instead of headstones we planted yellow roses. In one corner is my grandparent's orchard and in the other is my mother's tomato plants and a pond with a rope swing somewhere in the middle. We never mow the lawn but somehow we never need to. The fireplace cracks a smile and at night there are always fire flies. No fence. It's hard to leave the house, it's harder to leave the yard. But I always bring someone new with me whenever I come back.
In the front there is a door mat saying Finally