Excerpt: We Carry Houses

we carry houses
circumference of space
around a soul

houses carry we
not ghosts of flesh
but stories left behind
haunting

After a time houses, like dogs, take on the mien of their possessors. A house, after all, is merely a clearing for whatever shows up within it, takes on the character of the stories deposited within. Can a house have a soul, one might wonder? And what about a house that has accommodated many bodies over time, numerous sprawling tales and varied lingering essences of what-used-to-be smashed up against what-is-happening-now?

It was the summer of 2001. Gabby Gonzales turned thirteen years old.

And when the smudge appeared in the yellow house at 3718 27th Street, it came from out of nowhere, proclaiming itself upon the master bedroom window, staking its presence without any prior notice. A ghostly swabbing of gray-blurry streaks, amoeba-like at its core, some parts, solid white. Hovering over the exact center of the glass, an obscuring fuzziness.

Gabby walked into the bedroom at seven thirty-three a. m. to fetch her mother’s leather slippers and the smudge captured her full attention. It looked so strange. She went over to the window to examine it. Then she pressed a finger into its middle. The glass was cold to the touch. Tracing out tight concentric circles, she moved outward from its center, spiraling, her finger nub encountering no raised surfaces, no rough crust to pick away at with fingernail. Bending near, she exhaled breath onto the glass, making gauzy haze. Trailed one fingertip around its outer edges, marking out contours. Slicing through its middle, she made Xs and lines. Imaginary borders dissecting regions.

Tiny nation in the middle of that window.

A country so tiny, a microscopic lens could not see it, chock-full of miniature less-than-atom-sized people. So when Gabby pressed her fingertip down, just a little bit, she would smush miniscule bodies, communities of thousands, with apocalyptic weight. Crunch pin-fragile bone into blood-flesh puddles, obliterating an entire Smudge world. Or perhaps it was a population of silhouette specters that she pushed right through with that finger against the glass. Thriving spectral remains scattering a chilled landscape.

Broken outlines of used-to-be.

It was a Tuesday.