Sticks & Stones Will Break My Heart (this the joy of motherhood)

He draws a smiley face in every window of his chalk house, and someone stuck a smiley face on top of the brown bookshelf.

One day I even came across a tiny blue butterfly sticker which found itself in flight behind our cheap little kitchen toaster.

I step past an old flower pot they’ve filled with a mulch of sorts to house the acorns they’re trying to grow into a whole live oak tree itself, a tossed out laundry detergent bottle is their watering can of choice.

All the sticks and stones they’ve strewn all nary about I know will break my heart, and what kind of inexplicable joy is this to feel that kind of ache?! Here we are, home sweet home—just up the hill a ways and deep down in my chest!

But at what point do you think I can strategically relocate that soppy mulch sitting on our front doorstep?

-S.V.F. // Sticks & Stones