Photo by James Garcia on Unsplash
by Dawn Miller
We slip through wall studs, step over chalk outlines of counters, vanities, that over-sized quartz kitchen island we’ve always wanted in this, our first home.
Sawdust coats the soles of our shoes, butterflies our tongues, lands in the creases of our palms—each day drywall shuttering space so we no longer pass through rooms as if invisible.
Family and friends gift money trees, felted coasters, wines from around the world at the housewarming party, and we lift our glasses, not knowing time will tick by in birthdays, mortgage payments, pencil marks of children’s heights on doorframes; that gashes will mar the pristine walls; that bearing walls will buckle and sag.
In winters—life anything like what the Hallmark movies promised—hoof prints trek across the freshly fallen snow, the prints so close to our house we wonder if soft brown eyes peer at us through the cold glass at night while we sleep, wondering how long we’ll stay.
Later, we sit on the paint-stripped porch surrounded by ghosts and the bitter orange scent of bergamot tea, remembering the good times because we can’t ruminate on the bad, or how long it’s been since our children visited, yet isn’t it the ultimate dream to sit with the one who knows you best, who knows the deepest parts of you and stays? And we understand the stark radiance of years, and how soon one of us will leave this house, this home we’ve built, and in our quietest moments, the ones at night when we stare into the watery darkness of the full moon, luminous and ripe, we pray we’re not the one who’s left alone.
Dawn Miller is the 2024 winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest and 2024 Forge Literary Magazine Flash Fiction Contest. She lives and writes in Picton, Ontario, Canada. Find her online at www.dawnmillerwriter.com.
