#83 Ages

by Emma McMorran Clark

There’s a lonesome whistle coming from upstairs, the wind’s freight train skimming crevices where the cedar siding fell away years ago.

Everyone fell away years ago.

The dust rag limp in my hand as I caress neglected banisters, polishing those loops and whorls of grease that remind me there was once more than this.

I drop the rag, press my fingertips into the lacquered wood. I can hear her breath in the insistent wind, weeping, echoing throughout the second level where the pine floor above my head is still stained with the blood of one bad birth.

Down the hall I touch the wainscot at the spot where the floor dips, as I have done since I was small. Drips in the paint, lumps beneath my fingers, knots holding memories of when the house was full of laughter, the harsh chemical stench of hair products almost covering the humid smell of woman.

The hall stretches, bent by perspective so that the morning light streaming through the front door seems impossibly far. Floor cobbled from years of feet pressing themselves into the memory of this house. I drop to my knees and press my cheek to the scratched and peeling linoleum checkerboard. Somewhere beneath layers of glue, there is heart of pine. Covered and made fussy like all those ladies’ faces.

Windows don’t always need dressing.

My little girl would have lived here. Oh, would that my little girl had lived.

I lie still, seeping into the pine.