On Abraham Lincoln’s ‘My Childhood Home I See Again’

My childhood home I see again,

And sadden with the view;

And still, as memory crowds my brain,

There's pleasure in it too.

—Abraham Lincoln, “My Childhood Home I See Again”

I hadn’t seen that street in years—

but there it was:

that poem,

like a key under the mat

of a door I thought I’d forgotten.

Suddenly,

the walls knew my name again.

Cracked paint, sure—

but I remembered every crack,

how they spidered in the corners

like stories trying to escape.

And I could hear it—

the block party music

that shook our windows

but never bothered us,

because joy was never something

you asked to turn down.

I felt the cold hill beneath my coat

as if I’d just let go of the sled—

as if gravity still pulled me

toward the version of myself

who laughed without bracing.

And this—

from Lincoln.

Not the monument,

not the martyr,

but the man

who once stood

at the edge of memory,

half-smiling,

half-swallowed by time.

He gave me back

what I didn’t know I’d lost:

the permission to remember

without guilt,

to feel joy

even in the ache.

And now,

when I think of home,

I don’t try to rewrite it.

I just return.

And thank him

for opening the door.