You don’t know your house until you know it in the middle of the night,

When the floorboards creak.

Things settle.

Houses, people, all folded in the embrace of the softly familiar.

You don’t know your house until you know it a few hours before dawn, pierced by the high cry of a baby.

Cry becomes cough, cough becomes croup, croup becomes children bundled

into cars like pajama-wrapped packages,

hot under flashing lights.

Back, the house breathes a long exhale, 

Recognizes the relentless exhaustion, coffee at 4 a.m., 

Bodies large and small turning toward each other in a huddle of comfort.

First black, then purple, then lighter and lighter washes of grey seep through the windows

As the curtain of sky is lifted.

It’s showtime, folks – coffee, breakfast, teeth and shoes, books and tears,

cereal and laughter.  

You don’t know your house until you know it in the gentle dark,

Until you can trace your finger across its sleeping parts

And inexorably, inevitably, find your way home.

By Nelle Stokes