#flippantthoughts

[flippantthoughts]

The last time I came home.

I leave the front door open and let the light pour in the storm door, let it reach all the way through my shotgun house to the kitchen. I do this on Saturday mornings, first thing, and don’t lock everything back up until the sun sets. My house sits on a corner. I watch the neighbors stroll past with their strollers and leashes, and I guess they probably watch me, too.

There wasn’t a storm door in the house when I bought it, but there is now. I put it in out of nostalgia more than exhibitionism.

Because on any given Saturday, maybe this one, as summer gives way to fall, I expect I’ll glance down that long hallway and see a different corner lot view. Same storm door, now covered in dollar store window clings of Peanuts characters in Halloween costumes, of little bed-sheet ghosts peeking out from where the glass meets the door frame. Leaves pile in inviting mounds in the yard. The rake is balanced delicately against a tree I never managed to climb, though I tried and tried. Balanced there as if he will be right back.

The sun shrinks back earlier and earlier now. She used to leave the porch light on for me, then, bathing the little plastic skeletons hanging in the gardenia bushes in orange light. They used to leave the front door open until we were all “in for the night.” I could look up from laying in a leaf pile or jumping off the culvert or flipping garden pavers over and see right down that front hallway to the back of their home.

I don’t decorate. I say it’s because “you don’t decorate a dirty house” - she said that, actually - and I hate deep cleaning. Plus, all the glass cleaner in the world can’t get every single spot out of my storm door. I cleaned the other door - her door - before every holiday for years and years. I think they changed the active ingredients in Windex. It’s the only explanation for the lingering spots.

I leave the front door open every Saturday, but I don’t put up any window clings featuring Snoopy in a carved pumpkin. I don’t own a rake. The tree in my new-build’s front yard is barely taller than me, so there’s no point. I don’t mind all that - I like my corner view and its potential, the promise of more autumns.

But I can’t tell you what my kitchen looks like from my front curb looking in. I leave the light on, but it’s an LED, not a halogen bulb. I’m always the one locking up for the night, now. I just wish I had known when the last time was going to be the last time that I’d look up from the leaves, see that orange beacon, and know someone was waiting for me to come home.