1 minute read
When We Talk About History by Catherine Cosgrove
there’s a yellow house on the street that shares our last name,
and how it flooded when the snow melted and carried tension to the ceiling
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and grey March runoff began bobbing beneath cedar floorboards.
The story is worn down, threadbare and yawning
on its stubby legs, taking one last go around.
And history is subjective like a furrowed brow transfixed in sorrow and asserting:
If we lived here we’d be home. And it doesn’t really matter
if you never understood how her mouth slid against the words, or why every street
reminded her of South Buffalo and that she used to take three buses
and a streetcar to school, how she wanted to pay twenty dollars
in 1945 to change her name to Elaine, because Phyllis was stodgy and unremarkable.
Everything comes back to the faded yellow house that straddles Lake Erie
and the street that isn’t named for us, but holds us all the same –
