Eaves
I can't help but tell the stories of doors, of old houses, of hearth and fire. In the world I want, we tell the small tales and we listen.
Eaves A warm creak to this house, a wooden tense, a wind batters the hull, shutters clap, reveal rain. From his chair, in the crook of his arm, the iron poker and his flock is hearth and fire and logs and a hewn kettle, lionized and rough, it breathes a constant note. An axe kneels at the door, a slim gun winks or dozes. The fire stretches fingers over what was their heavened bed, her shoes in footprints beside where she let them rest. And tonight, his pipe will bring no comfort though he gnashes the bit. The smoke’s hug is grey fog rather than mist, the plumes, smog rather than of bread, of work, of earned heat. Still it comes, in the whispered morn, turned over again, his hand to her pillow a familiar cold— she’d surely risen long before, careful not to wake him.


I had to give in and look up hearth.