First Home

Myrna Leone Sims

I’ glad you love that room, so much, o neighbor mine, and keep and care fro it so tenderly. It is your living room, all furnished fine; it was for seven years a home to me.

It was our kitchen, parlor, bedroom, and all the rest. We rented it from you, my man and I, when we first started keeping house. We guessed it was the sweetest haven ‘neath the sky.

Young happy hours of joyous, perfect bliss, we knew and revealed in there in that room. From morn until the night-times goodnight kiss, there never was a tiny place for gloom.

When almost three short years had quickly flown, there to that room our first wee baby came. I thought, before, great love and joy I’d known, but never this. Her Father felt the same.

And, as she grew in size, and in our love, our first some came, with mischief brimming o’er. No sweeter babes had come from heaven above than those, we thought, who played upon that floor.

After a time I made wee clothes again because another one was to come, the doctor said, and then there came the night of birth and pain, and in that room our baby was born - dead.

We moved that spring, and live another place, but memories sad and sweet cling and twine about that room which now your fine things grace. I wonder why it still seems mostly mine?