THE OLD HOUSE

Time stopped for you, didn’t it,
when your daughter disappeared.  

Twenty years later, her bedroom 
has become a nursery for spiders,

her clothes still in the bureau, books 
still on the shelf. The journal

where she kept her baby pictures lies
open; the page marked all grown up

is empty. And I

~

am reduced to a ghost, treading
these faded floors. Every corner

holds some memory of a thing
I left behind. From the outside,

the house seems unchanged:
siding sunburnt and desquamated,

the rodent graveyard overgrown,
the apple tree lifting its scarred limbs. 

Inside, I hold my breath and listen
to the faint notes of a music box,

plinking out joy to the world.

Desiree Remick (she/her) is a current student of creative writing at Southern Oregon University. She is passionate about learning, adores her family, friends, and house plants, and has never met a form of writing that she did not immediately want to try. Her debut short story was the runner-up for Kallisto Gaia Press’ 2020 Chester B. Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize. Her work has also appeared in the Nude Bruce Review, Unlost, and The Ekphrastic Review. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/desiree-remick-writes/.