Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 1

A Trip for Two

The house sits modestly on a patch of uneven earth, framed by low stone walls and a tangle of wild roses. Its clapboard siding is weathered to a soft gray, like driftwood that's forgotten the sea.

The house does not announce itself. It waits. Its presence is quiet, like a memory you’re not sure is yours. The porch sags slightly, as if tired of holding up the past. A pair of rocking chairs sit side by side, their paint flaked and sun bleached, like old friends who’ve stopped speaking but refuse to part.

The morning light filters through the trees in fractured beams, catching on spider webs spun between porch railings and the handle of the wheelbarrow. Dew clings to the moss like secrets. Somewhere beneath the sugar maple, a chipmunk performs a frantic inventory of its hoard, unaware of the slow theater unfolding around it.

A pair of shuttered windows squint at the morning sun, and the chimney exhales the faintest curl of woodsmoke, evidence of a fire that's been left to smolder.