for Peach Bricks and roses.

I took my first breaths in a brick home.  the bricks were the color of peaches, the color of my hair as I took those first breaths, and that house was as long as our kitchen is today.

We had a door that has since been painted red, above two front steps where I sat with my neighbor friends and our little black cat, dressed in halloween costumes and witches hats. I don't remember winter there; Halloween and fall, sweet, sticky grapes and apples, green grass and sunshine are a part of that house.  but my memories are only warm.

In that little brick kitchen I burned myself on breakfast and in our tilted attic I remember a quilt, scrapped from violets and blues and some yellow, and it was thick.

An apple tree spilled over our fence and grape vines spilled through our neighbor's, whose brick was strawberry-colored and stood stacked into two square floors.  they had more steps than we did, but we never sat there-- our place was on the swings in the back, picking grapes and staying away from the dog that was tied under the sheetmetal we thought was a garage.

there was a water spicket that dripped into pebbles, and a hose nearby and in the summer we drenched and dried in the grass and the sunshine, and we chalked our outlines on the sidewalk and when we were brave we stayed a little closer to the dog.

Driving past that little brick home the neighbor friends are no longer there.  Neither is the dog or the chalk outlines and the grass hasn't seen our footprints since the twentieth century.  halloween doesn't look like those two front steps and the door is now rose red and fall isn't sticky like those grapes and it doesn't taste like our apple tree anymore --

but the sun was shining yesterday,
                                                and the bricks were still painted with peaches.