The Light Across the Street

Tuesday morning. The house was gone.

Fog, shoulder-high, the color

of nothing. The whole street

taken back to white—

the shutters, the mailbox,

the cracked front walk, the car

they never seem to move.

All of it.

One orange light floating

at chest height, where the porch

should have been. I stood

on my step and looked for the house

behind it. Looked for the green

of the shutters, the post

of the mailbox. Four years

of driving past that house.

Nothing. Just the light.

Hanging there without its house,

patient, not bothered,

doing its job.

I stood there too long.

Then drove through a street

I could barely see

to work I barely did.

Came home at six. The fog

was gone. The house was back—

shutters, car, the walk,

the mailbox. Everything returned.

I stood at my window.

The porch light was on.

The house around it.

That was the worse thing, somehow.