Slumberyard Court

I slowly pulled into the cul-de-sac, eyeing the fancy unfinished houses suspiciously, rolling up my windows until the cracks diminished entirely. The nearly empty and partially transparent orb of the rising moon hung awash in blues and greys just barely above the distant hills. It looked remarkably huge, even in those final vestiges of daylight. Funny how it always tricks me like that - it looks so daunting, so impressive and intimidating as it first breaches the horizon's boundary. But once it stands attentive, high overhead at its zenith, it always appears fancifully smaller, unimpressive and shrinking in its bath of black sky. Some trick of the eye. Still, no matter what size, I could see it now in the sun's waning light, that meek moon with its powerful head staring down at me longingly. I had a feeling it wished to be here with me tonight to share in my anxiety.

Hello, moon, feel free to join me there's plenty of room here.

I nudged my tires against the curb in front of the court's center house. This building was lacking doors or windows; it stood as a mountain of stacked, treated wood with a partial roof and piles of shingles on each cornertop. She was to meet me here shortly. And I had arrived early, betraying my usual nature. My heart beat irregularly, as if drowned in ephedrine, and my fingers shook subtly but uncontrollably. I wiped my palms against my jeans and stepped out onto the mud-ridden curb. The slam of my door startled a few birds strutting nearby and they gathered themselves up together like a blanket of navy blue silk and took to the camouflaging sky. The bland front yard consisted of piles of dirt, orange plastic barriers and narrow ditches carved in parallels. There was no grass nor rosebush nor tree. I walked onto the barren earth near the front doorway; there appeared to be fossilized bootprints embedded in the mud. I matched my feet into two obvious prints and blew them a kiss.

Oh, hello little house on Slumberyard Court. You shall be ours someday. Someday when you are finished, with your gleaming sparkling fence out front and your flourishing garden, wrapping alongside the walkway made from the stones that she and I gathered atop Lovers' Leap and threw miles down to the ground below to collect again once we reached the base. Your roof will reflect the sinking sunlight like watercolor, the handsome chimney smoke will wordlessly puff and cumulate and rise until it dissipates and joins the invisible air, where I will inhale it back again with heaving breath while tending to your soil, and she'll watch me from the windowsill, smiling and laughing that deliquescing laugh. Oh the joy! The livelihood, the spirit of you, you home you! The life that's readied in this place of mine and hers and ours!

I closed my eyes and stood very silently, soaking in the future. The moon still watched as it inched upward effortlessly with a loving gaze on its face. Its blues and greys were darkening.

Hello again to you. You shall be our welcome visitor in this place, this home. Come as often as you like.

I entered through the doorless doorway and knocked my feet on the wooden floors. Stray clumps of dirt fell to the floor like a misty spray of unexpected raindrops, in little pitters and patters, fits and starts. I kicked them and squelched them waitingly, impatiently, their brown streaks looking painfully stark amidst the colorless void of sawboard.

The background hum of an automobile droned in the air, hovering in the near silence, calling an enchanted cry of metallic precision into the fading sunlight. I stood centered and braced my arms evenly in the windowframe that faced the street. I listened intently. The humming intensified as an unlit car slowly slid into place behind mine, its engine expelling a pausing sigh of relief before drifting into temporary oblivion. My bloodvalves shut down, heart quit pounding and shriveled to raisin, nerves unraveled and quivered bitterly, feet became leaden anchors. She had arrived.