i Spy

In two of the houses I grew up in there were junk drawers. Always in the very last drawer near the edge of the counter they held a myriad of little collected objects. There was a little ceramic bowl that my uncle made when he was young. It was glazed light blue on red earthenware clay. In this small vessel sat a big ring of keys and some coins. I once counted all of the keys and there were thirty seven; I tried all of the doors the locks the cars and safes and closets in the house and none of them fit. My mother used to tell me bedtime stories and would ask her to tell me about finding a secret door in the house perfectly sized for me that led to somewhere else. In my mind the door was painted white with a brass keyhole for a skeleton key. The turn of the key coincided with a quiet clicking, a turning of the gears and the door creaked open.

The drawer had this white plastic organizational doohickey inside that wasn’t all that effective. Trinkets were tossed inside. When I reached second grade I would leave all of my spare Lego pieces within the wooden cask. I got older and they collected the spare dust particles that were left floating around. In the second house that I spent the second of three thirds of my childhood in is where the basement flooded. The carpet got ruined and turned to cold concrete. When me and my parents first moved into that house we slept on an air mattress down there; it was near the summer solstice and the air conditioning wasn’t working. I would stare at the ceiling fan go around and around in circles, sunlight streaming in from the blinded windows. On a cool summer night I heard croaking coming from the window well and the next morning the body of a frog lay there. As cold as it was when it still breathed in the sweet air.