House

by Jenny Hykes Jiang

I live in a house of dish clatter, coal smoke, rust-colored salve, plas­ticine praying hands and sheets bleached with sun­light, smelling of lye.

I live in a house of my mother and my mother’s mother and her mother. Their red sea, moon and tides, fil­tered light, a promise; shush­ing throb. My house a ship pum­mel­ing waves. House of being borne.

I live in a house where my father tunnels in straw, hay, snow. House of my body held, my breath a bowl cupped warm in his hands.

I live in a house shim­mied and stacked on a hundred houses, hive of houses, all the lighted windows winking at one another. House where my son’s grand­moth­er pastes red cal­lig­ra­phy bless­ings to the door. Where my son cannot under­stand his father’s father’s lan­guage. He folds colored paper into flight, launch­es them from above the tree canopy. His house is that lift and loft. My house is his pound­ing body running ten flights to gather what’s scat­tered along humid paths.

I live in my grandmother’s house of warped bone. Poverty house. Drunken house. House where unspeak­able things are done to chil­dren. Rat nest of rickets. House with its hands full of dull blades. I live in the house of my sons and their grand­chil­dren and their chil­dren. Cobble and current. Riddled cot­ton­wood tun­nel­ing sky. They glimpse me as in a green frame of watery glass, rustic woman pulling her sun-heavy cart.

I live in a plunder house pulsing with the ghost heat of wild berg­amot, bluestem, turkey foot, milk­weed, spi­der­wort, purple cone­flower, rough blazing star. Cattle carving the muck until bobolinks appeared that spring and claimed their house between the humming elec­tric fencing. House of sil­vered bird­song and horizon nesting against a tender bank of grassed earth. Our house the migrants’ black wing glint, swoop and gleam.

I live in a house I’ve never seen. Taber­na­cle house of cur­tained linen and scarlet and purple wool. Cir­cling encir­cling, embroi­dered layers, a drapery nested center of wilder­ness. Golden box hidden in the cellar of all my houses. House holding every house as the sun’s net holds. House of wind and its cloud house of rain, and each flecked drop its house of ash, house of sea.

Photo by Dan Meyers. This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 16.