There Sits a House

There Sits a House, illuminated by a flash. Bathed in artificial light. The roof is metal, worn, in visible disrepair. This house sits on an uneven dirt road. Flowering shrubs sprawl across the front creating a beautiful barrier, separate from passers by but not private, just distant. A few exhausted lines run from the rafters with color; cloth garments and sheets drying.

The vehicle driven to this house kicked up dirt some of which landed on these drying clothes. Labor spent.

There Sits a House.

The door is ajar. It is dark, night has fallen or at least begun to. The corrugated metal roof overhangs the concrete building creating a covered area outdoors, a porch. Sturdy looking bamboo posts support the outer edges of the roof in its struggle against gravity. Although appearance would see gravity as losing, gravity is in no rush.

Exterior walls are of a light pink hue, cracked and splotched with muddy water. Individual bricks peer out from behind openings in the concrete. Light escapes through the ajar door revealing a floor with small buckets and an interior wall. The buckets may be used for cleaning or gathering water. I am unaccustomed with Indian housewares but I imagine the occupants use these buckets daily. They sit on the floor, awaiting the call, fulfilling their utilitarian duty. Unflinching devotion.

Needles and the end of a branch hang over the house. Perhaps this tree provides for this house. Perhaps it provides shade. Maybe kindling or wood to burn on cold nights or for a warm meal.

To one side the exterior wall of a larger building, a larger home perhaps, towers above this house. It shouts luxury with its glass windows, illuminated by light trapped indoors.

I have only seen this house in pictures. I may get to visit it one day soon. They say, the people in the vehicle who took that picture, that someone I know lives here. Someone who says she is not my mother. They say that if I see this house, if I see this woman, or if she sees me, she may decide she is my mother.

There Sits a House. A house that is a home. A home to a woman. A woman who says she is not my mother.