OLD HOUSE

Front step broken, front door deeply cracked, generations of paint. Scratches around the keyhole, fingerprints around the knob.

On the hall table a notebook kept by the children: lists of the birds that came, drawings of themselves playing in the snow.

A little too much furniture: rickety tables, soft chairs, iron plant stands that once held potted ferns. A battered dresser with crockery not chipped enough to toss, a few old letters, knick-knackery, a blotted book.

Behind the tattered draperies, on the walls, crayoned drawings the children made: snowmen and cats and sleeping dogs, the smiling sun shining on a cottage with its red roof, ascending smoke.