Airstreaming Receives a Terrific Review

“With no wasted space yet plenty of emotion, the simplicity of Schabarum’s writing is a marvel. Compact sentences brim with an appreciation for character and the lonely expanse of suburban life. The constantly shifting characters become inextricably linked in different ways, until they ultimately separate, finding freedom in loss and letting go.” – Kirkus Reviews BOOK REVIEW In […]

Sledgehammer

Destruction feels good, knocking away detritus, cobwebbed shingles, rotted wood. We understand now how the house got away from her. Neglect tells stories, reveals pain. So we slam the iron fist hammer to clear hurt, loss, and damage to rebuild a  porch, a place to enter our new home that is being torn asunder bit […]

Neighbors

In the hush of morning, our neighbor is lost. Gone are hanging baskets, a throaty laugh, smiles. Gone are watchful eyes, keeping our corner safe. Gone, too, is Sunday church, those days she was so beautiful in her best dress. Gone will be the name Olevia from our lips, except as memory instead of a […]

Ducts

Imagine the amount of air that moved through these ducts, heating spaces and toes, providing a warm place for a dog to lie against on the coldest days. To build takes days, months, years even, but destruction takes seconds, or hours. These ducts in the back of my truck, scrap tapping against the window; I’m […]

Trevor

Our turtle, Trevor by decree, greets our friends on the stairs leading down to our future garden. By nature slow, in water, buoyed by salt and waves, turtles are weightless. Years ago, shoulders heavy from my lost mother, in Hawaii’s warm blue, a turtle rose up to greet me and floated there. I’m still, eyes […]

Spiders

Spiders have a bad rap, hanging as they do from doorways, windows, rosemary and juniper as if ready to pounce. They announce fall, nets catching the last flies, gnats; intricate threads drip diamonds early mornings when the fog is hard against our windows. There it is, waiting, waiting for the hapless, still as dark, legs […]

Trees

In the first days, we revealed the house, the land and sky, felling trees in hours while the neighborhood watched. An old Japanese maple was discovered, which now angles toward the sun, wind shedding its broken branches. Other trees, so long neglected bud anew. Trees are resilient, are in constant need of the elements. We […]

Electricity

A small fire to be sure, but fire nonetheless. Borne of a spark, faulty wiring the verdict. It just needed maintenance. A check up, steady hands and tools to close the circuit, cap the wires. Electricity flows, bends, arcs, and dissipates. In this home many of the sockets don’t work, but enough do, and all […]

Nightlight

A beacon for houses, the nightlight is a safe passage to our front door. If one feels at sea, find our house, the one on the corner, with the cracks, failing plumbing, electric wires haphazard in their power. Know our light will not go out, despite admonishments that renovation is hard, the challenges will pull […]

Stucco

Lines like roads etch the stucco. our house’s face a roadmap of weather: rain, wind, sun, and today, this fog. Fog against the windows, in the eaves, sun just breaking through. We question whether to demolish and strip away the years, or patch and repair, leaving the history, and the roads traveled, as proud reminders […]