in the kitchen of my shadow
The crows and I have tea every morning, rain or shine, smile or sadness, awake or still mired in dreams. I am drawn to the world outside my tiny window, a world of birds painted bright on a backdrop of trees. The shape-shift of shadows as we pass through the seasons offers up a daily dose of impermanent art in one corner, the place where no one ever sits.
Soon, I will be out of doors as much as I am in, and these walls will talk to each other. I wonder, often, what they say behind my back. Sometimes I catch a whisper when I walk around the corner, or crash through the door with my arms full of groceries, and hush! becomes an echo of everything I’ve missed.
A house is always telling stories, but you never know which are fact and which are fiction, so you label them all tall tales and let them bob around up high, near the ceiling, and watch the spiders eat them for breakfast.
Late at night, sometimes, those same stories will drip down the walls like tears, and I’ll remember a day long past. I’ve lived in this house almost 30 years, more than half my life. There are words shoved deep into every crack and crevice, and all the dust is made of promises. It’s a tiny house, and someday I think it will burst with the memory of all the lives that have marched on through, in life and in books and in my imagination.
I never thought I’d spend all these years in one place. Never thought I’d still be staring out these same windows with the eyes of an almost-old woman.
We’ve grown up together, this house and these birds and this creaky laughing body of mine.
Beneath this sky that holds the sun that draws these ever-changing shadows.
It’s my job to sit here, to watch and to listen.
The crows and I have tea every morning.
.
.
.
May 2nd, 2015 at 9:48 am
oh kelly. there is poetry lingering in your prose and stuck in the corners of your house. i’ll bet even the spiders who live with you spin webs made of words. i love this. (and tiny houses are good houses, you know – they push us out the doors when they’re able, when the snow’s not piled against the windows and blocking the way. they hold their stories closer.)
again, i am in love with this. love.
May 2nd, 2015 at 10:55 am
Oh, that’s beautiful about you and about your home and the walls and windows. I always feel that a bunch of rooms will talk to you if you listen and that is mostly what I dream about. I would love to have the memories of a home for all those many years … you are a blessed woman, Kelly.
May 2nd, 2015 at 9:20 pm
I love this combination of birds and home and stories. Now that the weather is warmer and the windows are open, it’s so beautiful every morning hearing the full concert going on outside in the trees (although some have better voices than others). 🙂
May 10th, 2015 at 2:49 am
I always say hello to the crows. I think they remember, even when we forget ~