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Walls straight as ramrods
with flawless paint on them,
pictures hung tastefully
in varied corners of light,
furniture endowed with symmetry,
embellished with modern art,
carpets laid to stay your fall
and beds inviting clean repose.

This to childish eyes,
but changed with the years,
exact time remained vague
but the walls changed, seemed aged,
They shriveled into crooked lines
and shrank or seemed so at least,
they seemed to exude thinner air
and an odour that assaulted sense.
The paint stripped and revealed the old,
old walls of dirty brick,
the pictures scared the daylights out of me,
of dreadful monsters and
dreadfuller sins,
the furniture as the walls,
wrinkled and crumbled, fell.
The house carried an expression
of the tormented,
and housed a damned air.
Home and Hell became synonymous.
My petrified limbs woke from palsy,
and took time to stumble out.