The Treehouse Poem by I.J. Benjamin

When I was eleven,
there was a treehouse up on the neighbour's tree.
It was my sole envy, it was all I wanted, but my father,
he said,
'Tomorrow, we'll build it together'
but we never did.

Some months later we heard that the kid next door had passed away.
His mother was crying, and my mother, poor thing,
held her as tight as she could, at the doorstep of the
yellow house with a red 'welcome' mat
and a faint smell of cigars.

Every sunday I was allowed up there,
I'd watch the smoke and the leaves dancing in the wind,
I'd watch a man at the ATM, i'd watch ducks at the pond,
and the way people walked.

And at seven my father staggered to the tree to yell at me,
'Get the hell down here'
but I stayed up there.

I was drunk in love and he
couldn't climb.