a poem about the house i grew up in but mostly about my mom

To whoever lives in my childhood home --

Do you know that there's a tree under all that paint?
My mom and I put it on the wall
I picked it out before I even knew who I was
    And yet those colors follow me
    white pink green

Do you put anything on the mantle my uncle built?
    Mom's brother
    He hated to see it colored white because he loves wood grain too much

Is there still a butterfly under the medicine cabinet?
Is there still a medicine cabinet?
There used to be flowers along the baseboard
    And a Scarry golden bug
    Until we both fell to age and blue paint

When the sun comes tearing through the kitchen window,
    does the afternoon light show you the words my mother painted?
She splashed Cary in red across the wall
The same way she strung up Wordsworth above the bathtub
And old Bill was right, wasn't he?
    Nothing can bring back the hour

 I think about my mother moving into that house
    to think that she was barely older than I am now
    and had this first place to call her own
    to mark
    to claim
She always hated the dark there
But she bent it back until it shone

Do you still feel her there?
She's embedded in a decade of paint.