Old Houses Speak in Hollow Whispers

At Real Toads, we are offered a selection of beautifully haunting photos taken by the talented Mary Ann Potter, of From the Starcatcher, including the gorgeous one above. Like Mary Ann, I am fascinated by the history carried within the walls of old houses. There is an old crumbling house at the end of Beaver Creek with a story. I am imagining most of it, but the two sisters in it are for real. I will go take a photo of it, maybe tomorrow, and will post it here later. Wish I had thought to take my camera today when I drove past.

Old houses

speak

in hollow whispers.
This one
has its own
story to tell.

The roof is moldering
and sagging into itself.
The front steps are rotted
and all askew.

The door creaks
slowly open.

Dust motes dance and whirl

in the afternoon sun.
The rooms smell
as if a window
hasnt been opened
indoors
in twenty years.
There is the scent of mothballs,
and cats.

The stairs

groan in protest

under our unfamiliar feet.

They remember
laughing little 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 limply 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 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 and silent and sunburnt
from the haying.
Suitors, in time,
arrived on horseback
to pay their calls,
the young people sitting,
stiff and uncomfortable,
in the front parlour,
averting their eyes
and trying to think of
something to say,
teacups and saucers clinking
in their nervous hands.

How the sisters
whispered and giggled

to 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 would live out their days
together

in this shabby, downturning house.

Every evening,

all these years,

the two sisters have walked,

slowly, with their canes,
along this country road.

But 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.

Soon, now,

the house will be

empty,

as it has not been

since it was built

somewhere around 1915.

Then,
how those echoes
will whisper
like disappointed ghosts
through all
the dusty, empty rooms.