The Juniper Hall
By the time the light remembers itself, the house has already decided to be brave. I wake to the low, resin-sweet breath of juniper coming from the embers, as if the hearth kept a secret vigil while I slept. The coin on the curtain tie is still; the frost on the window ferned itself into tidy feathers and then stopped, obedient. When I unlatch the shutter and lean to look, the lane holds only yesterday: fox prints stitched neat along the wall, a sweep of someone’s broom at the neighbor’s step, the shallow, broad smudge beneath my window pressed into a pale arc and softened by night. I don’t touch it. I close the shutter exactly as it was and go down to the kitchen to put water on. There’s comfort in doing a thing how you were taught. I set the wood in crossbars. I adjust the hearth a th
- Writer
