Someone else has taken up the house we used to live in,
Filled it with their dreams and things and pictures on the walls.
Someone else was given what my people had been given:
Room to keep a thousand books, and echo shouts in halls.

They took and changed what had been ours to make it theirs more truly,
Patching up the ceiling cracks and taking doors away.
There is gravel where the sidewalk was and pavers marching duly,
And a valance on the window where my curtain used to sway.

Strange how paint can change a hall to make it somehow stunted,
Furniture can fill a room which had been wide as dawn.
I don’t mind they’ve narrowed down the entryway I wanted;
Fine with me if fine with them to put the shutters on.

But standing here, their pictures there, and everywhere, their voices,
I see their dust has covered up the things I used to know.
And something like a songbird in my secret heart rejoices
That they cannot move Antietam Creek or change its ageless flow.

Sheila is a Pennsylvania housewife who shares love, laughter and the hope of the resurrection with her welder husband, Michael, and their seven children born from 2007 through 2017.