New York Graphic Design firm | Alfalfa Studio » There's too much ...

For the ones who are away from the home that saw us grew up. For those who, no matter time or distances, still love the place where once belonged. These lines are a sketch, a humble poetic essay imagining the feeling our homes might have when we are absent. Without our voices filling all the spaces, what is there? Maybe there is too much silence…

Sketches of the house I grew up. Watercolor and ink, 2006

There’s too much silence here…

The old wood front door
The color of a wistful song:
Would it pine for me, no longer seeing me enter and leave?

The smooth walls that change their colors
Like the hours of the day:
Would they miss me, no longer feeling me come and go?

The quiet room that was the witness
And accomplice of my first dreams:
What would it think?

Where are all of those dreams?
Perhaps forgotten in the silence of a gray corner?
Or maybe hidden in the back of a thought?
Would they have been impatient waiting, or gone flying to the sea,
Or like stationary clouds remained floating in the same place?

The cold tile floor that saw me walk:
Would it remember my tender steps?
Would it recognize my new way of wandering about?

And the conversations and the loud voices
That once lit up the kitchen:
What happened to them, could it be that they took a trip
Or perhaps moved in with the lady next door?

The windows framed in orange arches
That look like the wide eyes of lovers:
Do they still keep the images of those lost days?

Of the hugs, of the laughs, and of the cries, I want to ask:
Have they turned to dust and been swept up by someone?
Would they be ghosts or would they remain alive?
Or like the day when night falls, would they grow dim?

There’s too much silence here . . .

Why does everything stay identical yet nothing is the same?
Why this urge to leave you and this emptiness when I abandon you?
Why when far from you I dream at night of falling into an abyss?
Why even though I relinquished you, when I come back you let me kiss you?

Why do you guard it all and not share it with anyone?
Why, when I’m not under your roof, does it feel like punishment?
Why is there no other space in the world that takes me in the way you do?
Why are you still waiting if at times I forget your existence?

There’s too much silence here . . .

I wonder if that’s what you’d be thinking
When on this cold winter afternoon
I’m not with you anymore
And my presence is what you’d be longing for.

Written by Rafael Esquer. New York, New York (January 2012)