September 2023

There’s a cat on the lawn, with a short bobbed tail. Under the changing maple. It stretches and preens and paws at the falling golden leaves. I want to do that.

I want to stretch in slow protest when the sun moves past me.

I want to stalk the rabbits back through the bushes and to their den.

But the girl is busy turning my insides out. I pop one swollen cabinet out of socket due to the humidity and she’s become a mother determined to drag a wet cloth across my face and scrub off the mess.

The books are cleaned. The floor is cleaned. The clothes are cleaned. The tired machine in the kitchen runs all day to suck the wet from the air.

But after all the popped knuckles, wrung rags, and greasy elbows I’m shiny and soft and all the doors and windows are open to the first cool breath of air.

We rest, like the cat on the lawn.

We watch the leaves fall outside and she wants to bring them in.

She strings me with lights again. She whittles down a small forest to plant inside. She puts up trees and tears her books into leaves for them to drop. It’s not like it used to be, when I was a grove of pine trees that never grew old. When I was the red clay being cursed in the garden.

Still. The gesture is there. And I look lovely. The outside brought in. The old come back again.

Remember,

The apple house