the fall of night

March 26, 2010 by Melanie Alberts.

This street is as straight as a dying man’s scrawl. The bit where the road curves is where the odd, off- white house still sits, home to no one now. Next door and all around are brightly painted bungalows: pink and lilac and turquoise, like pieces of an outfit picked out by my blind grandmother. This oddity reflects each sunrise as it mixes with the cool of afternoon. It longs for the fall of night. At night, no passerby looks askance at its drab siding or missing shingles. At night, ebony warmth folds into the interior, all eight hundred square feet of cobwebs and debris. At night, people once talked in soothing voices, reading aloud to each other from newspapers spread across their laps. Over their shoulders, lamplight the color of old photographs fell. This house is worn around the edges but to someone, still recognizable as home.

Dressed for a funeral
my great-aunt fingers
her wedding ring

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