The Home Alone is in Pain

It creaks open with a humph
and a downturned lip,  
the greeting of a house  
left uninhabited,  
  
like a gumamela past its bloom,  
the house sulks and shrinks,  
it pulls a face more felt than seen,  
and disassembles,  
   
the hardest of hardwoods darken  
to a pout, tegula roof tiles bought  
with the promise of 'for life'  
slide off and fall,  
   
the sulk is subdued when you are there,  
though you might hear a grumble  
in the pipes, a painting decides to leap  
from its tethers,  
   
while dogs are articulate  
with woof, whimper and friskiness,  
the house can only cause a creak,  
can only moan,  
 
windows slam, fluorescent lamps tilt,  
but not in pique, for the house only seeks  
to harm itself as the unvisited  
often do.  
   
It was audience and venue    
for mirth and many, and now,    
unkempt, it has the brittleness  
of the formerly loved,  
   
ay, we break the bodies of those we love and leave.