your house

at the stoplight today I realized something, Grandma

nine years have passed since I’ve seen your house

never once had I stopped to ponder this; that is what struck me most

it was always you alone that I missed and mourned, a figure not belonging to a place or time; so

very rarely did I think of your staircase, steep and oaken, and the way it would creak under my feet, or

eating pot roast at your dinner table, the orange glow of the lamplight above us casting shadows over our faces, or

running with open arms in your backyard, laughing up at the sky, breathing in the air of late spring along with the smell of your cigarette smoke

seeing you and your home with my own eyes in the present tense of my young life, oblivious that there would be a last time I’d do so

at what point did it all change? at what point did the

roaring flames burning in your fireplace die, crackling one final time before its blaze faded to ashes?

your life and love was a lot like them—hot and fierce, and left to burn out—never lost, yet still forgotten

—

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