Streetlights
Streetlights
The House At The End Of The World
December 12, 2018
Alone Home
The neighbor has not been seen since last summer. He must have moved. Perhaps he went back to New York where he said he originally was from.
He had a wife and at least two kids and they were all very nice. Sort of like hippies. And they had a lot of cats including one who would ride on the man’s shoulder when it was time to go inside.
When they first moved into the house down the block it needed a lot of work. Chipped paint, creaky and crumbling steps, lopsided windows and more. But they had blue siding put on, and then replaced the windows and it was around this time that they didn’t seem to be around anymore.
But the skull remains.
They pasted a life-size skeleton face to their front screen door a few Halloweens ago and it has made us think that despite the sudden renovations and the prolonged absence the friendly hippie neighbors must still live there because wouldn’t the new people make it a priority to remove that skull?
Wouldn’t a realtor or a landlord take it down?
The skull stays and so it must mean they’re coming back.
And the light is always on.
He was a nice guy who could talk about music and seemed to get a bit nostalgic when anyone would mention the ocean. He had tattoos, a goatee and, at well past 40, didn’t seem like he’d ever start a fight but looked like he could probably finish one.
Once, two summers ago, he helped you look for your cat and was glad when she came back on her own, unharmed.
And his cats, like the skull, are still there.
You see them on the front steps. An orange one that is shy and retreats when you say hello. There’s also a black and white cat that darts around by the bushes.
Would they leave their cats behind? Never.
Would they?
Maybe the cats own the house and they kicked out the people. Maybe the cats have dwelled in the creaky old home for years, decades, centuries and every few years they get new people and clean windows and fresh paint and they are happy.
The birds fly by and tease them. Summer dies in the autumn wind bringing October then Thanksgiving then Christmas then January’s vengeance and the cats hold on in the house until spring again.
There will be a day, the cats say, when the whole neighborhood moves away. The houses will be gone and the people with them and even their own house will crumble to the dust and the cats will remain and reign under the stars and Christmas cold of a thousand centuries, marching toward eternity.
Or maybe the cats were never there at all. And neither were the hippies.
Could it be that, with a Christmas hymn in your ears and the infinite starlight above on a crisp, still night that it’s all a dream? The cats, the hippies, the house and the song that you hear slipping away from an empty home were never there.
The only thing that’s real is the silence from neighbors who don’t say hello. And a cold street that keeps taking you to the same place, the same place, the same place, the same place, the same place…--TK
Wednesday, December 12, 2018