My parents bought a rundown place,
A house out in the hills.
For twenty years that’s where our family stayed.
They made that house into a home,
The best that they could build:
The house where I was raised.

Life came on, as life will do,
For my two sisters and me.
Our cracked and crooked foundations were laid.
As time went by I saw that I
Was growing up to be
A little like the house where I was raised.

At night-time I can close my eyes
And see every detail, every crack
Of the rooms where all my hopes and fears were made.
When morning comes, the memory fades.
I’m never going back
To the house where I was raised.

We lost that house and cleaned it out
When my dad got laid off:
Twenty years packed up and cleared in days.
I burned the last of what was left
And choked on the dust of
The house where I first got laid.

Looking back, I choose to cherish
The hope over what happened to
The family that house held as it frayed.
The new folks there have done it up,
And it’ll never be the same:
The house where I was raised.