Rubber Houses

Yeomans, Ellen. 2007. Rubber Houses.

Verse novel. A family about to be in crisis. We see the before, during, and after shots of a tragedy. Kit, our narrator, has a younger brother, Buddy, who is quickly diagnosed as dying of cancer. (I believe they name it as cancer.) Every emotion describable can be found in Rubber Houses.

Here is one of our narrator Kit's early poems:

What If I Tried

and let go just a little,
stayed in this
warm kitchen, ate another cracker,
sipped more cocoa,
ignored my homework,
just for a night?
What if I tried
and let go just a little,
forgot my GPA, my class rank,
popped some corn?
What if I tried
and let go just a little,
read a magazine,
soaked in the tub,
worried less about the future,
took care of just now?
What if I tried to defy my nature?
Would the world stop spinning?
What if I tried, just for a night?

Here is the "after" portrait:

What If I Cried

and let go just a little,
stayed here in this
warm kitchen, actually ate something
sobbed if I needed to,
released some tension,
just for a night.
What if I cried
and let go just a little,
remembered myself, my old life,
wallowed a bit?
What if I cried
and let go just a little,
read a magazine,
soaked in the tub,
worried less about the future,
took care of just now.
What if I tried to defy my nature?
Would my parents pull themselves together or
would whatever is left of us fall all part?
What if I cried, just for a night?

I thought the book was good. Some of the poems were just beautiful. Very powerful.