I have lived in this house

I have lived in this house with my arms full and my arms empty. I have lived in this house old and young. More years than people in my family ever live in houses. 


I have lived in this house noisy and quiet, dusty and swept, stinky and sweet-smelling. I have walked the rooms barefoot, I have stomped upstairs and down in my muddy boots.


I have lived in this house fat and skinny. I have worn my husband’s hand-me-down jeans, my children’s hand-me-down cargo shorts and hoodies, my own flowing colors. I have lived here with big-eyed boys and sassy teens, sweet tall young men, and all of their ghosts keeping me gentle company. 


I have lived here with mice, with crickets, with ants. In this house I have remembered my mother’s sharp quick way with cockroaches, the flipflop in her hand coming down in a perfect crack. I have lived here with clean dishes and dirty, remembering the Sunday afternoons and the hot sudsy sink of childhood washings up, mother and sister and me singing rounds. I have lived here with beds and tables, chairs and dressers, carried back and forth across the continent, and I don’t forget the children who stood in the cribs, who bounced on the beds, the man who sat at the desk, the little boy scrawling happily on the wood. I remember driving to flea markets and yard sales, filling the empty Oakland apartment with objects long-loved before us.


In this house there have been years of sense and years of nonsense. I have lived here a poet, a reader, a dancer, a shrieking comet of revenge. I have walked the rooms smug and content, I have paced them hugging myself and rocking myself to stay sane, I have filled them with people to sit on the couches, poke at the fire, swing in the hammock, dance through the living room, chat on the deck, drink in the kitchen, eat at the table, sleep in the different beds. Sometimes, all of those people are me.


In the years of this house I have put up pictures and taken them down. I have moved the furniture, back and forth and back. I have walked away from the house down all the roads of this town, wandering through leaves and snow and mud, shivering and sweltering, oblivious and hyper-aware, surrounded by friends and drifting alone, and for every time I have walked away, I have walked back again, along the stone jigsaw of a front walk or up the crazy-tilt steps from the street, and through the old front door. In this house, I have pulled off my boots, peeled off my socks, thrown off my coat, mindfully deposited my keys in the front-hall key bowl, and run to get to the bathroom in time because I had to pee so bad. I have twisted my ankles and stubbed my toes, dropped weights on my feet and slashed my fingers, and almost everything has grown back as it was before. 


In the years of this house, with jets flying into skyscrapers and nation taking up sword against nation, I have closed the door to my office, turned on the noise machine, and delved into documents, paragraphs, semicolons. With words piling on surfaces, toppling to the floor, pooling at my feet—with the work of words to steady me—I have anchored myself at this desk, in this room, in this house. I could be anywhere, but I am here. 


I have lived in this house old and young. More years than people in my family ever live in houses.


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