Dear Giant Cape Cod House,
We only knew each other for scattered weekends over two summers, but you have become in my mind The House. You are the place where all the ghosts live. (They’re jumping off your dock and playing croquet on the lawn. They’re limping on your crushed gravel walk, they’re awaiting the diagnosis, they’re recovering in the sunroom. They’re reading Rosamunde Pilcher in a deck chair, exploring the carriage house in pairs, jostling and joking in the kitchen. They’re confused in your splendor, whispering “how lucky?”)
You are the shape of my memory palace. You are the setting for the stories that swirl in my chest like smelly vapor from a magician’s smoke machine.
I really did love your sunroom. Even if you were the place where it all started to unravel, I remember that room with uncomplicated tenderness.
Get out of my head you beautiful ruin,
-e.