Is there a soul to a house?
If we call it just a house and not a home, does it still possess a soul separate from the vagaries of mortgages, layers of paint, or crayon, or grease on the walls, busted pipes in the winter, the seepage stains that are like Mercatur projections of alien continents on whitewashed mortared walls?
Does the heart of a house exist outside any memory of the tangible moments that mark the living within? Or does the spirit of a house, soul-centered in an aging body of wood and brick and nail, pulse simply because there are lives, loves and deaths that pass through? Perhaps an invisible, silent, tender skin of cares, of worries, of hopes, coats every moment exchanged. Coats the hallways, the rooms, the stairs, the steps leading away. In this old house on Earl Avenue.