December 2021

December 2021

The girl might not be a girl after all. She is gathering like some non-human thing, and hoarding it all inside. Taking out and bringing in odd piles of everything but seeds. She could spend more time watching the birds.

Dirt below, the girl brought in a full tree. A young one. And she continued to cut it up there on the front step, hacking away with a single mind and small heart and slightly less fingers than she started with. She gifts us all matching earrings and garland and gaudy trash from the store. I do not like the clutter, but there are these lights now and you should see the way they make me sparkle.

If you were really my friend, you’d come visit me at night. Not to come in, but to stand outside and watch me glow gold in every window.

So many people come this month, I might as well not have any doors. They are not here to see me, as none of them stand outside to watch the windows, they are here to see the girl I believe. She is a very poor host. She burns dinners, doesn’t mop, and generally drifts about all empty and sideways. She lets them open all my cupboards and rattle my pipes and even when they leave, the girl doesn’t come back.

She must have gone far this time. I considered inviting another girl to stay instead. The curly one she brought in with the red cheeks and drumstrings. That girl whose voice I’ve heard before. Who knew me well enough to gift me music and not earrings. That girl could be mine instead and the oven would get good use.

But she leaves me with my girl, still the vacant thing too dead-eyed to look out the window. My girl who laughs when the man with a long lens says, “You have a good way of looking at things. Most people try.”

And then my girl leaves me. Then my girl leaves me. And then rain and cold and days in bed with string and needles and no dinner. A kitchen can catch a cold that way. Too little use and too much want.

She brings an almost wolf inside. Some soft-toothed thing that sheds and slobbers and is afraid of the stairs. A good and holy fear. A brave and gentle wolf. They call it wild, but there is no wild left in him. Just a good large soft strong loud whisper of something that ran through the woods once, when there were woods. He’s the only one that comes back wet from the river, and I respect the wolf for that.

My girl is dry and limping and tired and gone. Still gone.

She makes no attempt at my overdue gutters.

the apple house