House

I woke this morning with a small animal gnawing at my entrails.

We'll have to sell the house. Simply no money anymore for this big old house. We need to find something cheap and little, in a worse neighborhood.

I've loved this house. Christmas, Duncan, Socks and Angel, not to mention Croaker, are buried in the back yard. At night I look up through the skylight to see the vast, ancient maples stirring far above. Out back, the even older apple tree, possibly the last scion of the orchards of Mt Tabor. The vine-tangled trampoline.

Now that we're going to have to leave it, I love everything about it with a startling intensity. And I treated it so carelessly when I had it. That's where the real pain lies, I think. Not in losing the house I love, but in losing the chance ever to love it properly, love it as I should have done from the first.