All Our Houses are the Same House All our stories are the same story: it gets dark and we light fires and lamps. Seeds sleep under the snow. No one really dies. Our grandparents come out to meet us at the end of a long sidewalk in the shade of tall bushes. They fall to their knees, glad-crying but then we wake. Except one day, we don’t wake. In the wind, the wind— that’s where everyone is, riding the updraft, circling like the year’s last leaves. The door blows open and no one knows why. But that’s why. Nobody’s hung Christmas lights yet but up and down the street, each window goes yellow in the dusk. The creek is slow and quiet. Seeds sleep under the snow. No one really dies. In these days, we’re clothed only with love. Someone is leaving and someone is coming to the door. All our houses are the same house. What an honor to wait in it, listening. What an honor to turn on the stove and cook.
Christine Potter lives in New York’s Hudson River Valley. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Sweet, Mobius, Eclectica, Kestrel, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Fugue, and been featured on ABC Radio News. She has poetry forthcoming in The Midwest Quarterly. Her time-traveling young adult novels, The Bean Books, are published by Evernight Teen.
Amethyst Review 