And then, another life…….

Insentient. The house was once that. Yes. Yet, as I walked into the house for the first time, I thought I felt her fading ember. The feel of it gently touched me. ‘Is it you? Have you come to save me?’ She murmured. She had been silent for too long: unable to hear the birds; unable to smell the pine; unable to catch a breath of salt air; unable to dance and sing, and she had lost her strength though desire remained.

Regardless. The house was disappearing.

From the first moment I laid eyes on her, the realization of my own demise became apparent. I too had taken leave of my senses. I too had been slowly disappearing. We were bungled, the two of us, two fading sparks with no one and nothing to stoke the remaining cinder, no one and nothing to wake us up again. And so it was.

And then, as I walked across her wooden floor, my heart began to pound again.

And then, from the moment I unlocked the front door, she opened her eyes again.

And then, as I climbed the narrow flight of stairs for the first time, I caught a breath of salt air through an open window, and my feet began to dance. I was home. We were home.

The house had it wrong. I didn’t come to save her. She stayed to save me.
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