Occupation

They came in silence, moving through the speckled shadows of the dawn half-life half-something else; a strangeness They came in with the news, not in it not carrying it to us; but with the news they arrived, silently. We only read the words, but with the reading, we knew they had arrived and what was ours was passing from us. They’re sitting now in every room. At night we almost hear them. Fragmented whispers from up in the attic space, beneath the eaves, where they have frightened swallows from their nests. Uninvited, they came and like spiders filled the empty spaces. The house is full now and every empty room inhabited. Never seen but always present, they have made this house their home. No fuss. No malice. But we know now this house is theirs and we are only tenants.