There's a house I once built in my heart. One with walls painted the colour of love, lamps which burnt so brightly they lit up the darkest nights, and windows framed with hope, along with the promise of sunrise which danced along the glass before entering the house.

The first tenant was a traveller and crossed oceans to get this house. He brought along with him the most contagious smile, suitcases of dreams and framed photographs he hung on the wall. Framed photographs which told the happiest and the saddest stories. He lived in the house for awhile, but he couldn't stay in one place too long and so he eventually packed up, left behind a goodbye note, and took the first flight out. There would occasionally be postcards from him in the mailbox which stood outside the house, telling of better days spent in better places.

The house was left empty for quite some time until the second tenant arrived. He would lose himself in his art, and the many words he decorated his journals with. He fashioned a sturdy shelf to place his books in, and a fireplace which filled the house with warmth whenever there were snowstorms outside. Many nights he spent sitting on the steps of the house's front porch with a pack of cigarettes and his thoughts for company. It wasn't long before he left, without a sound, in search of a better place he could call home.

Days turned to weeks which then morphed into months. The next tenant came, and brought along songs which he played on his guitar in the dead of the night. The floorboards creaked and there was a hole in the roof, but he sat through the rainy days. He tried to fix the broken furniture in the house and often found ways of doing so. However, those methods were temporary and he couldn't keep the furniture fixed forever. He got frustrated and leaving the house was inevitable for him. The night he left, the angriest hurricane knocked the house over and made it fall on itself like a house of cards.

There's a house I once built in my heart. But now it ceases to exist.