The Bungalow Backstreets: Porchlight Conversations

Lyrics

They don't hear you from the avenue.
They don't see you from the train.
Tucked away under the old pecan trees,
holding back the Georgia rain.

You came here on a flatcar.
A Sears catalog dream, model 7096.
Nineteen hundred and twenty-two.
They hammered you together in the humid air,
smelling of pine sap and a new kind of living.
Your bones are good.
Your first family, with their starched collars and Sunday hats,
they sat right here.

On these painted gray floorboards, under the single yellow bulb.
This is where the real life is measured.
Not in years, but in whispers.
The creak of the swing, the ice clinking in the glass.
Porchlight conversations, built to last.

I know your seasons.
The winter silence, wrapped in gray blankets.
The spring, when the pollen dusts every surface gold.
But the summers…
oh, the summers.
The sound of a screen door slapping shut.
The children's voices fading down the block at twilight.
The slow rock, rock, rock of the swing chain.

The big box stores cast a different kind of light now.
A brighter, colder glow just over the rooftops.
The BeltLine hums with a faster pace, a different rhythm.
But you… you just hold the quiet.
You breathe it in, you breathe it out.
A slow, steady heartbeat of painted wood and brick piers.

On these painted gray floorboards, under the single yellow bulb.
This is where the real life is measured.
Not in years, but in whispers.
The creak of the swing, the ice clinking in the glass.
Porchlight conversations, built to last.

Sleep well, little house.
Keep the stories safe.