If This Were Our Home

Can you imagine if this were our garden? 

Can't you picture me skipping through these trees? Or reading tucked into the cranny of that tree? 

 

Can you imagine if this were our pond? We'd fill it with ducks and give them the names of gentlemen. I'd visit them in the morning, and trail the meadow with them in the evening.

 

If this were our window, I'd look out of it and dream. I'd think about the great wide world at the bottom of this hill; I'd nestle deeper into my cushion and think about how there is no where else I'd rather be. 

 

If this were our house, I'd sit in it after dark and cover pages with stories. I'd know every animal that passes through our land and every bird that sits on our roof. I'd wait for the geese to come home after winter, and pray for the fox during the storm. I'd open this door for the cat at supper time and watch it slip inside and fall asleep.

 

If this were our home, I'd never leave it. And if I did, this home would be the compass by which I would orient everything else. The wide world would spin around it, and I would wander its premise like a forger.

This home would be the center of my map, and I would draw everything else around it and label it by the names of the critters that live here. 

I would name this house after a villa I've dreamed of.
 

If this were our home, my bare-feet would wander every inch, every helm; every floor board would know the feeling of my step. I would know every sound, every creak and croak off by heart, and I would memorize the way every light shines through the bedroom window, the peak of the moon through the curtains and the touch of the sun when I'm waking. If this were my house I would line the walls with my books and skim the spines with my fingers.  

I would know what it is like to be intimate with a house, to know the house just as well as it knows me. I would haunt this house like a memory so that one day when people look down the driveway they would picture me in the window even when I am not at home. 

 You and I are old enough to own a house, but while we're penniless we are still young enough play pretend.

For now, you and I are guests here, skipping through the trees in a hush, stopping to read by the stream in the shade of a tree till it's time to go. 

Our home is the stuff of dreams.  

For now, let's pretend we live here.