House Keeping

After she left the house for realities unknown, abandoned rooms became discrete spaces fully occupied by her thoughts. Buses still stop two doors down, sparrows hop over the stalks of dead roses. Road dust carpets, then is windswept away. Eventually, Girl Guides selling cookies scrub her address off clipboards. The mail has begun to forward itself to nowhere. The house whispers to passing pedestrians, It calls to migrant cats, homeless mice, indigenous tribes of Carpenter Bees. A face on a billboard is planted in the yard, prospective buyers enter and leave, none move in. Her spirit returns for a while to inhabit the once lived in. half-heartedly she wanders over her own footsteps, does not stay long. Her arthritic presence has moved on to a place, a safehouse for the forgotten, where grab bars and access ramps are reimagined and improved.