Jonathan Johnson-Swagel

I have been building this house my entire life.
I didn’t choose the foundation;
I was born into its uneven cracks,
its crooked wood,
its places where the wind whistles
through splintered walls.
I didn’t choose the color of the siding—
peeling white paint like a ghost
that refuses to be buried.
But the hammer was in my hand before I knew
how to spell my own name,
and I’ve been swinging ever since.

The first time I felt the floor buckle beneath me,
I was four years old.
I’d built a fortress out of shoeboxes and blankets,
but my father’s anger tore through it
like a hurricane no one had warned us about.
Later, when my mother found me hiding in the closet,
she said, “This house isn’t safe.”
But what she meant was,
“This house isn’t safe for us.”
Still, we stayed,
patching holes with lies
about better days coming,
as if the lies themselves
could hold up the roof.

I want to tell you about the first window I broke.
I was nine, and the sun was setting red—
angry, like it knew something I didn’t.
I picked up a rock,
hurled it straight at the glass,
watched the shards rain down like truth,
sharp and sudden and unrelenting.
I stood there, staring at the jagged edges,
wondering why breaking things felt
so much like breathing.
Later, I swept up the glass
and told my mother it was an accident.
She nodded, but her eyes said she knew.

Years passed.
The house grew taller,
rooms stacking on rooms like unanswered questions.
I painted the walls with hope,
hung pictures of people who smiled,
even when I couldn’t.
But there were always parts I couldn’t reach—
corners that stayed dark no matter how many lamps
I plugged into the sockets.
There were always doors
I couldn’t bring myself to open.

In college, I fell in love for the first time.
He had eyes that could have lit the whole house,
if I’d let them.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I showed him the rooms I was proud of—
the ones I’d spent years cleaning,
scrubbing the floors until they shone.
I didn’t tell him about the attic,
where the air was too heavy to breathe,
or the basement,
where the walls wept quietly at night.
When he finally left,
he said, “I needed all of you,
but you only gave me the parts
you thought I could hold.”

After he left,
I smashed another window.
This time, I didn’t clean it up.
I let the wind howl through the gaps,
let the rain soak the floorboards,
let the cold settle in my bones.
For weeks, I walked barefoot on the shards,
waiting for the pain to make me feel whole again.
It didn’t.

In my twenties,
I started adding rooms for other people.
A library for my friends—
shelves filled with stories that felt
like lifeboats in a storm.
A kitchen for grandma Myrtle,
because she always said
healing tastes better when it’s shared.
A garden for myself,
though it took me years to plant anything
because I didn’t trust the soil
to give back what I put into it.

And then, one day,
the whole house caught fire.
I don’t know how it started—
a spark, a match,
a memory I didn’t know I was holding.
But I watched it burn,
watched the walls crumble,
watched the ceilings collapse into ash.
And for a moment,
I thought I would burn with it.
But when the smoke cleared,
I was still standing,
barefoot on the charred remains.
And for the first time in years,
I could see the sky.

This is the thing no one tells you
about losing everything:
the silence is deafening.
But it’s also the kind of quiet
where you can finally hear yourself.

I started building again.
This time, I chose the wood,
the nails, the paint.
This time, I built the walls thicker,
the windows stronger.
This time, I left the attic open,
let the light spill into the places
that once swallowed it whole.
And when I built the garden,
I planted seeds I didn’t recognize—
wildflowers, weeds, things that didn’t
promise beauty but promised life.

Now, when people come to my house,
I show them everything.
The rooms that are finished
and the ones still under construction.
The places where the walls are smooth,
and the places where the scars still show.
I tell them,
“This is my home.
It’s not perfect,
but it’s mine.”
And if they stay,
I offer them a hammer.
Because this house isn’t just for me—
it’s for anyone brave enough
to build alongside ruin.