After

I don’t know what to do with our big house on the hill. The steep climb up the driveway seems longer than it was before. The pavement looks more cracked, like a sea of shifting plates instead of a long contiguous strip to drive up. It’s a box, a six thousand square foot leviathan of sprawling brick and bay windows.

At night I can almost feel the tendrils of ivy swallowing it, squeezing it, daring it to crumble. I was never the one who kept the wood spiders from taking over the back porch. I never figured out how to keep the deer from eating all of our flowers. What do I do when it starts raining and water trickles through the walls in the basement? Where do I need to kick the furnace to get it working again? The gutters are too high. It will always be too dark.

All that space.

Just something to get in the way when I want to see the stars.