The house is cluttered and dust coats every available surface.

The curtains are drawn, the polished wood floor is covered in scratches and scuff marks; well used and well loved.

There’s a faint smell of burning ozone that the man guesses originates from the lights that hum a sad symphony above him.

The house is cluttered and crowded and terribly empty.

Like a black hole that cannot, will not be filled no matter what is thrown into it.

The funeral was days ago.

He saw the smooth finish of the pine coffin placed into the earth.

It was a strange sight, to see a vessel so linked with death and burial and to know someone so lively and kind resided inside. It was that thought that nearly brought him to tears.

But they never came.

Perhaps he had mourned his father long ago, perhaps he simply could not bare the vulnerability in such an unforgiving place as a cemetery on a hot summers day, where heat chokes worse than grief.

But when all was done.

When he watches his family leave to fulfil their own lives; when he returns home and sees half filled boxes, and his father old clothes still unwashed, his lungs turn to vacuums.

A coffin has never known life, he looks at it and he does not worry for what memories it has known.

But he looks around at this old brick house, with yellowing windows and the dirty old chair his father refused to replace.

He looks at the old chocolate tins that disappointed the children year after year when they were only met with oats looking back at them.

He looks at all this house has known and all it carried with it still and he weeps.

His tears are hot and the air to great for his lungs to breathe.

The old chair croaks under his weight, and it still smells faintly of freshly split wood and nostalgia.

His father was an old man, barely himself by the end.

His father’s passing brought a great sadness, as well as the release of a long held breath.

He had been his fathers carer, his companion in this old brick house. Often unclean, disorganised, with the old gardens always overrun with weeds; but it was always home.

Can it still be a home now? Or are it’s memories now a disease, slowly destroying it.

He loves this home, but he will not let himself be haunted by it.

His head is buzzing, there’s a constant humming between his ears that only gets louder the more he focuses on it, but there is little else to focus on.

He needs a moment.

So he rubs his eyes, feels the wet tear tracks, and he stands. The chair squeaks and groans as he does so.

The man stands and he walks out the door.