Dispatch from the House on the Prairie
by Sarah Parsons
The lot between this house and the river is not so large. In it there are dogs, cats, felled wagons and camas all sitting, turning, growing free. The lot is built up by boxes of discard– old sequined dresses, suit jackets and slacks, race cars, syringes, and a lone peach tree. Inching up our walkway is a family of crocuses and some tubes of matte lipstick, the first two signs of a coming spring.
Every week I take out the trash, and every week the river is closer to our porch. I attempt conversation. Ask if it could hold off because we are not quite ready for all that. It can’t hear me over the noise of what it carries: free flowing lovers, untapped epinephrine, there goes Tyler from next door and Ryan the butch barber.
The water has been expanding for some time now. It began last spring with a notice in the mail. A new tenant in the lot (moving incrementally, it read, as rainfall permits). Eden laughed and threw the notice away but the next week it rained and when I took out the trash our new neighbor was out there, waving.
The water is strong but Eden is formidable. When it rains, they set out buckets. When it’s dry too long they make deals with the river. We take in what the river spits out. I’m learning to quilt, so when the river presents a pair of well-worn boots I carefully strip the leather and will it to fold like cloth. When Eden kisses me I hope they understand our breath is hot and our bones stop their crackling by reason of a whole host of things, like the pollen count this time of year, the planetary tilt and thrust of their hips, and this water hopped up on radio signals tuned into every happening around every bend. Eden is planning a downstream expedition. They want to visit Graceland and they’re always humming pieces of Oklahoma! but these things amount to little in the harvest season, when they wear their heels tall and lean to shuck the corn. We throw the scraps in a pile, save for warming, save for winter.
Ryan and Tyler are coming for dinner, after they’re done with their swim. For now we are resting. Eden loves the crossword but the newspaper these days is too high on moral panic so we use it as firestarter instead. When the sun sets it’s good for toasting marshmallows on the porch. On rainy days the river laps at our ankles and we feed it the scraps.
We’ve talked about building a fence but Eden says what’s coming will come. I’ve been watching old movies and I feel something like a little girl stuck before a tornado. Eden has us growing vines which they say will root in the soil and provide something to grip onto, should all this come to a blow. Later I’ll bake a pie with the peaches from the lot. Eden is out there gathering the buckets. We hope what we have of this life will last.
Originally from Oregon, Sarah Parsons is an undergraduate student at Mount Holyoke College studying environmental studies and Spanish.