My Later House
Fiction | Charlie Hill | 8 Photography | Baxter Perry-Miller | 8
My house has always been there, with its big red door and a big old life. It’s full of my family. It’s full of my memories. It’s there as a place to sleep, eat, and enjoy life. It’s always pretty placid, but every now and then it can get crazy like when Mr. Clayman announces school ends early, but then he says you still have two more periods under their control. It is a house in the middle of a big city and it looks like it. There are a lot of people around it, and you always run into them and you have to talk, and you have to drop off some gift at each person’s house each year at Christmas, and you know they are all very nice people, and they would do the same thing for you, but you still just aren’t the type of person who likes to stay and chat. But that is not how it will stay because this is only my house now, not later. My Later House will be by itself, with all the land around it to itself. My Later House won’t have neighbors so close that you drive on their grass going up the driveway, and it won’t have five different neighbors whose name starts with a “W.” My Later House will have a little dirt road you have to drive on to get to it, and you won’t get there unless you really want to get to it. My Later House will look as if it has been growing out a beard for the last week, and instead of looking messy, it is shaved in just the right spots to look rugged but organized at the same time. Inside My Later House, it will be like when your grandpa, who’s been around since the time you had to work for everything, gives you an old knife he has had forever, and you are super excited about it and you work hard to clean it and sharpen it as if it were new like he would have, and when you’re done you look at it and are satisfied. My Later House is gonna be the type of house that when you walk in, you know by the smell that you are going to like it there. My Later House will be like that dog you’ve had forever and you know you can always count on to be by your side. The only problem with My Later House is that it won’t happen until a little while later.
