I have an old farmhouse inside my chest, wooden siding rotten in places and windows fractured from too many winters, the roof of which sags near the chimney-- faint smoke-clouds rising, and a light glowing yellow inside the kitchen, a beckoning
invitation into the faded blue walls full with portraits of four--my mother, father, and little sister--brassy frames hung close together above the wooden table, nicks and scratches connecting each placemat like dots of the coloring book page left magnet-stuck to the refrigerator.
The countertops have grown dusty. fruit-bowl collecting gnats and mold, but the zinnias over the sink flourish, replaced daily and blooming red as the teakettle rusting on the only remaining stove-top burner, the others broken, tossed into the garbage beside the back door, which leads to a forest--
rib-like oaks bent and bowed over the farmhouse, ivy vines coiled βround each trunk, stretching limb to limb, weaving webs tangled as the unruly branches from which they hang, caressing the slumped rooftop as if to remind the battered, tired building how, despite everything, the hearth still smolders.