Pick a sturdy foundation.

Take the broom out and sweep, sweep, sweep away the rocks, twigs, ants.

Pick a color out of the chalk box. Pick blue. Not dark blue. Not vibrant blue. The light powdery blue found on a cool autumn day. The neutralized blue that has been added with other colors to help mute the vibrancy. The homely blue that matches with the white picket fence and the white shutters that keep the secrets inside.

Start with the initial layout. Take the chalk color,

blue chalk,

and draw the walls top down. Count how many steps to draw each line as straight as possible on the pavement.

Call the neighbor over.

Hunter, the neighbor boy who is four years younger, comes over. Our parents both believe we will get married one day. Hunter likes all the colors of the chalk. I like blue. We stick with blue.

A house is not a home until all the furniture is placed. This is where Hunter can pick the colors and let me draw out the couch, the stove, the toilet. He wants to sleep next to me in the bed. We make two bedrooms.

Chalk houses can’t be made without jobs to help craft the homes and make new furniture.

Once I was a news reporter in the rain talking out loud to myself under the massive trees that litter our front yard.

Most of the time I rode a stick horse in the grass on warm summer days imagining the vast field around me. I asked for a horse every year for Christmas.

Hunter and I added windows, parking spots, dance pads, bathtubs, closets. We added a level of love to our creation.

Make sure no ants get inside the home. Ant feet like to mark up the lines so painstakingly drawn. The scrapes on fingers from kneeling too closely to the pavement are mere reminders of a good day.

Dad drives over the house to go to work. Mom drives over the house to go to work. It rains and the house slowly slips away.

Another summer day the chalk is brought out.

Pick another strong and sturdy foundation.

Take the broom out and sweep, sweep, sweep away the rocks, twigs, ants.

Hunter comes over and asks to pick the color.

Yellow houses are nice, too.

There is such a thing as the perfect mixture of mud.

It can be found at the end of driveways, about two days after the rain has washed the world away, and only if the sun has been forgiving.

The mud pile is dark in the center, with light brown engulfing it from all sides; It looks like melted cheese from the microwave that’s slowly started to harden back up. The top layer easily comes off, leaving perfect, oozing mud.

When the big house drawing gets too redundant after days on end, take chalk and make a small town for matchbox cars.

Blue chalk makes great roads.

The roads need the mud to get the right texture because the pavement is too boring.

Hunter makes me angry because he keeps smashing his cars into mine and wasting the good mud for playing.

This is a serious operation that requires all working elements.

Did we remember to sweep the rocks away?

It’s hot.

I’m irritated.

I go next door in my house.

Hunter goes in his house.

Perfect mud went to waste.

Pop-pop built a lot with his hands. He built me a house connected to the big shed out back.

A single light, cotton blue walls, a chalkboard.

I danced on the foundation of wood as the walls were going up.

Mike Ray, Pop’s neighbor, smoked his cigarettes like a chimney while Pop drank his beer.

Mom left the window open in the tiny room during the summer. Rain comes in through the mesh, the same rain that washed away my chalk homes.

Rain won’t wash away what Pop built. The rot is taking care of that. Pop still asks if I play in the clubhouse, despite me having to crouch down to walk through the threshold.

I wanted to buy everything for that clubhouse. A small TV to watch movies with my friends. A futon for achy backs.

I spray-painted the entire exterior a dark brown. Faded over time, the numbers I plastered in red no longer have clear indications.

My Clubhouse rules:

• Don’t scream
• Shut the door!
• Turn off the light J

The light only gets turned on when Mom goes to get the outdoor furniture at the taste of spring. The door only allows the spiders to come in and nest. The childhood screams have long since faded, just like the pale blue stained on the walls.

I never understood the concept of a fence. Well, the fence that divided Hunter’s yard and my yard. We used to run between the property lines while our Moms sat in the grass and talked.

I fell off the four-wheeler on that dividing property line and yelled at Hunter for sitting too close.

Trees came down on that line to save our homes from the destruction of wind.

The brown, picket fence ruined that.

A white picket fence would have ruined that too.

Pick your fence color.

Pick blue.

Measure the amount of feet to enclose yourself.

Build a small treehouse in the single, old tree with the roots that span for miles underground.

Attach the yellow slide.

Watch the kids smile and laugh.

Watch the kids cry.

We’ve never had a fence in our yard. That’s what made Hunter run so fast to our house that night. His socks soaked up the mud we would use in two days to make good mud roads.

Once you hop a fence, it’s a lot easier to hop it another time.

Mr. Joey didn’t get to hop that same fence.

I wonder if he saw blue on the other side. I wonder if there are fences to keep privacy. I wonder if good mud doesn’t take two days to get perfect.

I wonder what Hunter’s home would have been like if Mr. Joey hadn’t swallowed the handful of pills that afternoon and choked on his vomit.

I wonder if Hunter ever felt home again after the bank came.

My dream home has windows that let all the light in. The one window in my room doesn’t allow enough light, it still lets the dark come through.

My room has only been three colors. White. Yellow.

Blue.

The white was too dull.

Yellow is supposed to bring fun thoughts into an environment. I couldn’t stand the way the color faded in a few years.

Blue is calming. It still hasn’t calmed me. The walls of my room still hold all the happy memories.

The laughter, happy tears, love.

The walls of my room still hold all the dark memories.

The sad tears, the bad kind of love, the whispers.

Light and dark secrets.

My dream home will have colors that work. My dream home won’t have secrets long faded into the paint and drywall. My dream home won’t have a neighbor who runs over in his socks to tell me his dad is dead.

My dream house will not have the white picket fence because these dreams aren’t real. Homes could never be a happy place. The secrets of the past still hide in the nails and the dust topping the packed away treasures of past homeowners. Even new-builds hide the secrets of the workers who put their blood and sweat in putting the roof over someone else’s head.

My dream house has a happy wife and happy husband.

My dream house has a few kids and a dog.

The dog will die. The kids will move out. The husband and wife won’t be faithful and even one may die.

A neighbor will still run next door begging for help.

My dream home used to be yellow in the middle of the woods. The shutters were a dark green that graced the siding and complemented the white railing that wrapped around the concrete porch. My dream home used to have three bedrooms. My dream home used to have holes in the wall from when the treadmill got thrown down the stairs out of rage. My dream home used to have special order fridges because the contractors made the space too small. My dream home used to have pizza Fridays and homemade french-fries from the bag.

My dream home used to have a clubhouse in the back that Pop-pop made one year.

Mom keeps bringing up how home won’t be home forever. I can’t seem to wrap my head around that thought because that is my home, too.

Mom doesn’t want the stairs when she gets older.

Mom doesn’t want developments to pop up and ruin her seclusion.

Mom doesn’t want the faded memories staring back forever.

I don’t want the memories anymore because every time I go home I’m reminded of the pain trapped within the red paint, pink paint, green paint.

Blue paint.

You can cover up a nail hole, but you always know it’s there underneath the cover-up.

I haven’t seen Hunter since my first year in high school. I don’t think we will get married.

Take out a box.

Put the pictures on the walls in the box.

Unscrew the bed posts and load them away in the back of the truck.

Vacuum the carpet.

Touch the bare walls.

Say goodbye to the room.

The room in a house that is no longer a home.

I look at my cousin Maddie and I see the twinkle in her eye from dreams.

I put on a smile for her to keep her from knowing the bad things in this world.

The bad things like cheating fathers, drug-addicted cousins, lawns that go untouched for months, dying relatives, neighbors who tell you their father is dead, houses painted all colors.

Houses painted blue.

I look at Maddie and I see the future unfold in front of my eyes.

I see having kids.

I see living a happy life, at least for a while, before something happens that throws that all away.

I see having a blue room that doesn’t fade.

I see windows that bring all the light in and keep the darkness from creeping in the corners.

I see neighborhood kids who don’t have to run in the mud to ask for help because their dads are dead.

Two homes that sit side by side share a common factor.

Both fathers, the kind who are loving and doting and young, die.

One wanted to die because the bedroom windows didn’t let enough light into the room.

One died when he went into work and his heart gave up.

Two homes that sit side by side share a common factor.

Both parents only have one kid. A boy and a girl rumored to get married one day.

Two homes sit side by side.

The girl had money put away for school. The boy had his money taken to pay the bills.

Two homes sit side by side.

One is yellow, the other is blue.