Old Houses speak in Hollow Whispers

Old houses speak

in hollow whispers.

This one has its own

story to tell.

The roof sagging into itself,

front steps rotted

and all askew like crooked teeth,

the door creaks slowly open.

Dust motes dance and whirl

in the afternoon sun.

There is the scent of mothballs,

and ancient cats.

The stairs groan, remembering

laughing boys and girls

pounding up and down,

sliding down the bannister.

On the walls are smudges and handprints,

cracked peeling wallpaper,

pale green, with big pink cabbage roses.

Tattered and dusty mesh curtains

hang limp and grey at filmy windows.

In the hallway,

up one side of the doorjamb,

back by the kitchen,

are penciled names:

William, Henry, Emily, Rose.

Upstairs, the small rooms

are filled with old iron bedsteads,

and remembered echoes

of whispered nighttime conversations

from a century ago,

when all the world

was young.

Two elderly sisters lived here

from the time they were small.

They were young women in this house,

dressed in sprigged cotton,

sitting on the porch

on cool summer evenings.

The brothers came in to dinner

sweating, silent, sunburnt

from the haying.

Suitors, in time, arrived on horseback

to pay their calls,

the young people sitting,

stiff and uncomfortable,
in the parlour,

teacups and saucers clinking

in their nervous hands.

How the sisters

whispered and giggled

with each other, later, upstairs

those soft summer evenings

before sleep,

dreaming their innocent dreams.

But life had other plans.

Their father died, and then their mother.

The brothers married off.

The two sisters stayed on,

in the house where they were grown,

and somehow, in the daily routines

and passing of the quiet hours,

the life they had dreamed of

passed them by.

They lived out their days

together

in this shabby, down-turning house.

Every evening, through all the years,

the two sisters walked,

slowly, with their canes,

along this country road.

Last time we passed,

only one aged sister was left,

standing, staring,

at the end of the footpath,

watching her days

slowly wind themselves down,

one by one.

Tonight, 
no sister standing at the gate,

the house stands empty,

as it has not been since 1915.

How those echoes must whisper

like disappointed ghosts

through all

the dusty, barren rooms.

A story for the Sunday Muse. There is such a house with two elderly sisters,  out the end of Beaver Creek, in Port, where I lived before. Empty now of all but memories.