HOME | DD

Description
My pack is heavy, and it caught on every single tree I passed down the trail.  I know I shouldn’t have packed it like that, but I need to get these things home before dark and I’ve no one to help me.  At least it was only a six mile trip.  I’m almost done, and the sun is still casting bright colors on the lingering clouds.  Soon I can wash and shed the sticky feel of sweat trickling down my skin in warm rivulets and soaking into my clothes.  My house is just around the next bend.  I can see a thread of smoke floating lazily above the trees.  That’s odd.  There are no other houses out here; it can’t be evidence of a neighbor’s fire. That little ribbon of darkness winding up from the trees keeps drawing my eyes; I am a little worried that I left the fire going; I don’t want to find the mantle of my fireplace singed or the thick area rug in flames.  I can’t look away from the sky, even when my pack catches on the last low-hanging tree on the trail.  I have to take the pack off to detangle it this time.  In the wrestle to free myself, my eyes drop and trace the wavering outline of the trees at the edge of the clearing that spreads in front of my house.

My sweat turns cold; I should be able to see the roof from here.  I should see the new bright red shingles I put on this last summer standing out against the dark green of the forest.  I should see the shadow made by the insignia I carved at the peak of the façade.  The entangled pack doesn’t matter anymore, only what’s in, or not in, the clearing.  It’s quiet; the creak my pack makes as it stretches the branch it hangs upon nearly echoes through the clearing.

Shock trickles down my back like icy water as I look across the ruin of my house.  This was the first real home I ever knew.  I felt peaceful here, out away from the noise of the town, but now all the peace is gone and the solitude I always sought is churning in my stomach.  I only left for town this afternoon.  I had only been gone from my little home for a few hours to buy food and supplies, just like every week.  My house has never changed this much in so little time; it took me almost an entire summer just to build it, and the rest of the year to furnish the inside.

It was small.  Only two rooms, a small living area and an even smaller bedroom, but I built it and the furniture myself and it was mine.  The first place that was really ever mine.  The walls were lined with shelves full of books, old and new.  One shelf held my journals and my records of my garden, the forest creatures, and everything I had done with my house.  My kitchen cupboards were unceasingly stuffed with food and small treats for myself.  I’d wake up every morning to the smell of leather, paper, and the fresh bread I had laid over the coals in the fireplace to bake.  The wood still smelled as fresh as the day I cut it and built my furniture.  I’d first put on water for soup on the fireplace. Soon the smell of broth would fill the little room and then I’d take out cheese and the bread to complete a small, but nutritious brunch.  This would be eaten while pouring over one of the many volumes I owned or borrowed.  When the weather was nice I would stretch out on the rough wooden floor below the open window, or outside underneath one of the many trees around my property.  I could read with the music of the birds, sparrows, finches, robins, and jays floating through the air with the breeze.  And when it rained, I would pull my large, overstuffed couch over to the fireplace and curl up under a blanket and listen to the patter of the rain on the roof and the crackling of the fire as I wound my way through story after story.  In either case, I would have a plate stocked with crackers, bread, chocolate, or fruit near my right hand and one of my beloved leather-bound books in my left.  I always felt comfortable and safe here in this little world I made for myself.

Now there’s none of that for me anymore.  My books and my journals are gone, transformed into the little pieces of ash that now blow around me in the dry wind by the fire that consumed my house and everything I owned.  I look up at the space that my roof used to occupy.  The last time I viewed the sky from here was when I laid the roof supports.  The timbers of the house are just char covered toothpicks sticking out of the ashes.  The ashes leave a greasy residue as I touch the wood I worked so hard to shape into my home.  Smoke no longer spouts from my chimney, but wavers up from everywhere and hangs low in the clearing.  The wood from my shelves still crackles and glows white hot.  My couch, which I had upholstered with a bright blue fabric, is now a bare, sagging black frame, smoldering in the middle of the rubble, the springs sagging miserably from scraps of stuffing that are still curling under their own heat.  The few trees that were close to my house are singed along the edges; the dry, half-dead pine on the corner still has a few flames flickering in it like demonic Christmas lights in the deepening dark.  The ash is still hot; the heat seeps through my boots as little gray clouds puff out from under every step.  Nothing survived except the stone fireplace and the marred frame of the couch.  I watch as a robin lands on my ruined handiwork.  The entire thing collapses under the almost intangible weight and in a flash of red, the bird is gone behind the green veil of the trees.  Just like my home, my books, everything.

What shall I do?

Description
My pack is heavy, and it caught on every single tree I passed down the trail.  I know I shouldn’t have packed it like that, but I need to get these things home before dark and I’ve no one to help me.  At least it was only a six mile trip.  I’m almost done, and the sun is still casting bright colors on the lingering clouds.  Soon I can wash and shed the sticky feel of sweat trickling down my skin in warm rivulets and soaking into my clothes.  My house is just around the next bend.  I can see a thread of smoke floating lazily above the trees.  That’s odd.  There are no other houses out here; it can’t be evidence of a neighbor’s fire. That little ribbon of darkness winding up from the trees keeps drawing my eyes; I am a little worried that I left the fire going; I don’t want to find the mantle of my fireplace singed or the thick area rug in flames.  I can’t look away from the sky, even when my pack catches on the last low-hanging tree on the trail.  I have to take the pack off to detangle it this time.  In the wrestle to free myself, my eyes drop and trace the wavering outline of the trees at the edge of the clearing that spreads in front of my house.

My sweat turns cold; I should be able to see the roof from here.  I should see the new bright red shingles I put on this last summer standing out against the dark green of the forest.  I should see the shadow made by the insignia I carved at the peak of the façade.  The entangled pack doesn’t matter anymore, only what’s in, or not in, the clearing.  It’s quiet; the creak my pack makes as it stretches the branch it hangs upon nearly echoes through the clearing.

Shock trickles down my back like icy water as I look across the ruin of my house.  This was the first real home I ever knew.  I felt peaceful here, out away from the noise of the town, but now all the peace is gone and the solitude I always sought is churning in my stomach.  I only left for town this afternoon.  I had only been gone from my little home for a few hours to buy food and supplies, just like every week.  My house has never changed this much in so little time; it took me almost an entire summer just to build it, and the rest of the year to furnish the inside.

It was small.  Only two rooms, a small living area and an even smaller bedroom, but I built it and the furniture myself and it was mine.  The first place that was really ever mine.  The walls were lined with shelves full of books, old and new.  One shelf held my journals and my records of my garden, the forest creatures, and everything I had done with my house.  My kitchen cupboards were unceasingly stuffed with food and small treats for myself.  I’d wake up every morning to the smell of leather, paper, and the fresh bread I had laid over the coals in the fireplace to bake.  The wood still smelled as fresh as the day I cut it and built my furniture.  I’d first put on water for soup on the fireplace. Soon the smell of broth would fill the little room and then I’d take out cheese and the bread to complete a small, but nutritious brunch.  This would be eaten while pouring over one of the many volumes I owned or borrowed.  When the weather was nice I would stretch out on the rough wooden floor below the open window, or outside underneath one of the many trees around my property.  I could read with the music of the birds, sparrows, finches, robins, and jays floating through the air with the breeze.  And when it rained, I would pull my large, overstuffed couch over to the fireplace and curl up under a blanket and listen to the patter of the rain on the roof and the crackling of the fire as I wound my way through story after story.  In either case, I would have a plate stocked with crackers, bread, chocolate, or fruit near my right hand and one of my beloved leather-bound books in my left.  I always felt comfortable and safe here in this little world I made for myself.

Now there’s none of that for me anymore.  My books and my journals are gone, transformed into the little pieces of ash that now blow around me in the dry wind by the fire that consumed my house and everything I owned.  I look up at the space that my roof used to occupy.  The last time I viewed the sky from here was when I laid the roof supports.  The timbers of the house are just char covered toothpicks sticking out of the ashes.  The ashes leave a greasy residue as I touch the wood I worked so hard to shape into my home.  Smoke no longer spouts from my chimney, but wavers up from everywhere and hangs low in the clearing.  The wood from my shelves still crackles and glows white hot.  My couch, which I had upholstered with a bright blue fabric, is now a bare, sagging black frame, smoldering in the middle of the rubble, the springs sagging miserably from scraps of stuffing that are still curling under their own heat.  The few trees that were close to my house are singed along the edges; the dry, half-dead pine on the corner still has a few flames flickering in it like demonic Christmas lights in the deepening dark.  The ash is still hot; the heat seeps through my boots as little gray clouds puff out from under every step.  Nothing survived except the stone fireplace and the marred frame of the couch.  I watch as a robin lands on my ruined handiwork.  The entire thing collapses under the almost intangible weight and in a flash of red, the bird is gone behind the green veil of the trees.  Just like my home, my books, everything.

What shall I do?