The Villa

the aging walls of stucco gradually break away,
crumbling with time,
and weary from little hands being brushed along their sandy surfaces,
and so the tiny pieces fall the great distance to the wooden floor beneath,
the floor that so many years ago, endured the trampling of innocent feet,
scurrying about in a game of chase,
which led like traveling wind into the kitchen, now empty and insignificant,
lacking the savory smells of rich, Italian spices it was once warmed with,
the aromas of pepper and sweet onion, rosemary and strong oregano,
and the strings of sun-roasted garlic which used to hang in the windowsill,
no longer were,
instead it was abandoned, and left for the sun to trickle in,
through the cracks in the walls created by the hands of history,
and upon beholding the empty kitchen, the sun would search for somewhere else,
in the humble villa so quiet and alone, standing solitary now,
and it would spread like silent wildfire into another room,
where stories were once told just below a whisper near the hearth,
where the tempered footsteps of a passerby could be heard outside the window,
along the winding, endless cobblestone pathways,
and where a voice once filled its walls with strains so achingly beautiful,
it lulled the little ones to sleep upstairs,
melodies that used to ascend with gradual crescendoes up the twirled stairway,
to where they found the musty loft, hidden, though not at all a secret,
now gathering a thin layer of dust as it hides alone,
as the slanted ceiling crumbles a little more each day,
stained by the sun,
and to only gaze from its height out the hazy window,
and look upon the rural extent of endless, tumbling hills,
laden in warm, summer rain,
would be enough to hold one there, and never let go.