the old house and its new skin

Once upon a time, there was an old house. It looked strange — not beautiful, somehow patched together. Shapes, colors, and materials didn’t quite match. Then the construction workers came and stripped the building down. And when it stood there, naked, it was an old half-timbered house, with a balcony that had likely been covered over later. It had once carried a delicate lace-like pattern before being hidden beneath fish-scale shingles.

All winter long, it stood there, naked and a little lonely, surrounded by modern concrete-and-glass buildings.

Then the workers returned. With insulation material — thin, barely three centimeters — and a layer of plaster and fake cornerstones on top. And so, the old wooden house became an old-looking fake stone house.

The house sighed softly. It had felt so light when it was bare — free to be what it truly was: an old wooden house. But now, it was trapped in yet another foreign skin. Perhaps it would grow accustomed to it. Perhaps it would one day forget that it had ever been different.

Or maybe, one day, workers would come again to strip away the layers — until the old timber frame once more saw the light of day.

#theme-old-or-young #oldhouse #poetry #construction-site #fake