\nHow does a house know it once was a person, rattling keys, feet ranging between hallways? Where does it hold its memories? I don\u2019t know, in fact, until the relief of a doorknob rattling, and footsteps enter my front door.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou need to stop doing this,\u201d Shuu says. \u201cI’m fine, I just need to be alone for a while.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI hear our friend Rhee. \u201cI’m happy to stay. I’ll keep to myself if you need that. You have to eat, and you’re forgetting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nWhere does a house experience jealousy? I only know suddenly my timbers felt like they creak tighter in on themselves.\n<\/p>\n
\nI wish there was a way to speak\u2014I am here.<\/em> I have no mouth to speak, but maybe I could communicate in another way. Coffee scents trapped in the walls stir. I was always the caffeine addict. The water in my pipes stirs around, dripping into the sink and flushing the junky toilet we always have to rattle the handle to refill.\n<\/p>\n \nAt the way Shuu startles, though, I am ashamed.\n<\/p>\n \nInstead of staying, Rhee comes with food after work, every couple of days. Tries to find things to talk about.\n<\/p>\n \nIt is too still when Rhee isn’t here.\n<\/p>\n \nI ponder my bounds. Cold solid corners, edging into soil. Sides brushed by leaves in the wind. A memory of coolness falling over time, followed by a reversing warmth. It was several days, I think, before Shuu came home.\n<\/p>\n \nOne day, as white-wine and garlic waft from another pan brought out from another tote, they both seem too sad and tired to force conversation\u2014there’s a clink of dishes being washed, no speech.\n<\/p>\n \nShuu breaks the stillness himself.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt could be my fault Ash died,\u201d he confesses. \u201cSomething went wrong, and I don’t know what it was.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWill it help, to face up to that? Maybe you need to figure out what it was, how you miscalculated. I’ve noticed you haven’t been working.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMagic doesn’t forgive. We buried Ash, and knowing why we had to do that isn’t going to change it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhere does a house feel sorrow? I know I am a house, but hadn’t thought of my once-body as dead. The space between roof and rooms chills.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo. But maybe you can move on once you figure out the extent of your guilt.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nOnce Rhee is gone, there\u2019s no banging of pans, or radio pumped up loud, to announce the change. But there is a generator hum, a clink of glass on glass. Sometimes a gentle change to the air tells what the chemicals and tinctures do. Sometimes a hiss of angry meetings, too.\n<\/p>\n \nLate into the night, the singing begins\u2014not Shuu but magic coming alive. As a house I hear it loudly, though Shuu probably only feels it like a prickling on the skin. He is waiting, rings a tuning fork at times, trying to match vibrations.\n<\/p>\n \nThere’s a greater clattering of glass as he cleans up, in deepest night yet. Then, in the stillness, I hear it\u2014weeping. What can a house do, but listen?\n<\/p>\n \nThe next morning when he rises there is a different charge to the air\u2014not just whatever he carries from the fridge back out to the lab.\n<\/p>\n \nHe doesn’t eat breakfast, something he confesses to his mother when she calls, but he promises to eat. I know he means: once he’s finished this last step of his project. This takes him until well past the glowing waves of midday sun.\n<\/p>\n \nThere is a sung note, as he sets everything in place\u2014clear, on-true. It rings up into my attic, down into the corners of my foundation.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAsh?\u201d he whispers.\n<\/p>\n \nI am still just the house, but now I can see my rooms, see my grounds. And I can see Shuu. I cannot speak, still, which is maybe what he was attempting\u2014he asks aloud, \u201cAsh, what happened?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI don’t know, either. Our experiments had always been risky, but his careful calculations had kept us from going too far into territory that would endanger us. How had it happened that I had become infused with the house?\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n\u201cI think it was my fault,\u201d he says. \u201cI was careless about the notes that night, because we’d fought. About dishes duty. Dishes! But you had left residue on the beakers, that’s why I was upset. Did I miss one? I don’t know.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHis silky-haired head is down, gazing at our cobbled-together trestle tables, littered with his papers, but the colored fluids that composed our spells all neatly grouped along the middle, far from the edge where I could have\u2014must have\u2014knocked them off.\n<\/p>\n \nSo careful.\n<\/p>\n \nMy sadness makes the stairs creak, like ribs tightening against a heart.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd where could a house form a voice?\n<\/p>\n \nI know I was the one who had pushed\u2014the spell was dangerous, but could be our big money-making patent. It was one of my wild ideas that had made Shuu edgy, though we’d done crazier things.\n<\/p>\n \nI hadn’t meant to try it on myself\u2014we did trials first, always.\n<\/p>\n \nBut I’d left a beaker on a corner of the table, like Shuu always chided me….\n<\/p>\n \nI’m sorry, love. I’m sorry. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nRattling pipes and making wraiths of coffee aroma aren’t sufficient. The dappling of afternoon sun on the sides of my house make me wish I had trees, rain, anything more than this inanimate board-and-block to express my words with. I\u2019m no longer jealous; if Rhee can hold this still breaking Shuu in warm arms, I welcome that.\n<\/p>\n \nIn time, maybe, I can discover a new lexicon even with these limits. But even so I\u2019m not sure I can ever reassure Shuu that it wasn\u2019t his fault that he can move on, that I don\u2019t mind.\n<\/p>\n \nShuu takes a jagged-edged breath, and his head lifts.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt think you are haunting this house,\u201d he says. \u201cI can sometimes sense it. The blinds haven’t fallen, the way they used to, and the hallway no longer has that little rise to trip me. So if you’re listening, Ash, this is for the best.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHis steady hands take a familiar lemon-yellow concoction, carry it to the far end of the table where sky-blue indicates a reversal preparation. He draws an exact measure of the reversal to add to that fateful embodiment infusion. As he draws near the spot on the floor still bleached sickly yellow from the mishap, I rattle my windows, to tell him not to do it\u2014not to let me go.\n<\/p>\n \nSurely he can’t ignore the racket, as if a wind hits the house from every side at once. I keep wafting out the scents of cologne, of laundry soap, speaking with the small noises of a discontent house.\n<\/p>\n \nHe pauses, kneeling before the floor.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow I know you\u2019re here,\u201d he chokes out. \u201cWhat should I do? Should I just do it to myself, and become your fellow ghost? I swear I\u2019m sorry for what happened! I can\u2019t bear that it happened to you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAh. And maybe a house can\u2019t feel how much it hurts to be haunted.\n<\/p>\n \nI once more take stock of what I transmuted to. The gritty edges of my foundation, shelter of small creatures and sleepy seeds in cool soil. The wind-shielding walls with tickling paint and eaves as shoulders. The inner narrow shells of walls, layers of defense. I let go of the last fragrance of brewing coffee, and in an imperceptible bowing open my window-eyes wide to stream in light.\n<\/p>\n \nHow does a house say, It\u2019s OK, I\u2019ll let go?<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nWith a warm draft pooling around Shuu\u2019s knees and outstretched hands. With a silence that lets his shaking fingers spill the antidote upon the boards where I became the house.\n<\/p>\n \nHow does a house say, It worked, we were close, just like we knew we were?<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nLetting the house fall asleep without me, like the sigh of a settling floor.\n<\/p>\n Crowe Powell has lived in many different houses, sometimes in the same towns but often in different states and even countries. She currently writes from one in Western Massachusetts, where she also sells books, plays hockey, and holds poetry workshops in unlikely places.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How does a house know it once was a person, rattling keys, feet ranging between hallways? Where does it hold its memories? I don\u2019t know, in fact, until the relief of a doorknob rattling, and footsteps enter my front door. \u201cYou need to stop doing this,\u201d Shuu says. \u201cI’m fine, I just need to be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2421,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20133],"tags":[20134],"class_list":["post-140315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-50-winter-2024","tag-the-colored-lens-50-winter-2024","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2421"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140316,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140315\/revisions\/140316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}