Star

We bring home, from far off places, things to remind us of where we’ve been, and who was there. This tin star from New Mexico is hung in our home after waiting two years for a light to brighten it. The light is found on the day my fiancé’s grandson is born, on a day […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]