This Old House

The house still stands

above the babbling creek,

though standing is not the same as living.

The creek still moves below it—

restless, faithful,

threading itself through stone and memory

the way it always has.

Once, it sang louder.

Or maybe there were simply more people listening.

In summer, frogs crowded its muddy edges,

their voices rising through twilight

like a chorus, too, ordinary then

to understand as sacred.

A little girl carried them carefully in her hands,

one at a time,

bringing them proudly into the backyard

before returning them again to the creek by dusk,

as though love meant never keeping a thing too long.

Now the porch sags gently into memory.

No cinnamon drifts from the kitchen.

No screen door slams behind children

racing inside with pillowcases swollen

from Halloween candy and neighborhood victory.

No wet sneakers abandoned near the fireplace.

The homemade curtains are gone—

the ones Mom stitched at the dining room table

while humming under her breath.

But the old light switches remain,

yellowed with time,

still waiting for familiar hands.

If this house could speak,

it would not begin with sorrow.

It would tell you about birthdays on the back deck,

paper plates bending beneath potato salad and cake,

about sleepovers with whispered secrets

long after midnight should have ended them.

It would tell you about Christmas cookie flour

dusting the kitchen counters like first snow,

children stealing frosting from spoons

while Mom pretended not to notice.

It would tell you about homework by the fire,

records turning slowly on the old player,

the soft crackle before music began.

And the family room—

alive with football games and relatives,

voices layered over one another,

Dad cracking walnuts into a metal bowl

for Mom’s Polish dishes.

The sharp snap of each shell

still seems trapped somewhere in the walls.

Dad has been gone for years now.

Yet some evenings feel suspended,

as though he only stepped outside briefly,

as though the house itself expects

the sound of his footsteps returning.

But time does not return things untouched.

Mom lives elsewhere now,

lost in the shifting shadows of Alzheimer’s,

her bright personality dimmed

into moments that flicker and disappear.

The woman who once filled every room

with color, opinion, laughter, and fire

now asks questions the walls cannot answer.

The grandchildren grew up.

Moved away.

The creek watched them leave, too.

And silence settled over the house slowly,

room by room,

until even the pipes began rattling

like restless bones beneath the floors.

Sometimes, in winter,

the sounds echo through empty rooms

with such longing

it feels as though the house itself is grieving—

aching for one more crowded holiday,

one more summer evening with frogs in buckets,

one more child racing through the front door

without stopping to wipe their feet.

The creek still babbles below the hill.

The frogs still return in warm weather.

And the house, old and waiting,

holds every voice inside it still.