Short Words

The Logs

Genre: realistic fiction
Author's Note:
This is a piece that I wrote about my house being foreclosed when I was little. It was heartbreaking, but hey, I have a nice house now, that's all that matters.

The light colored logs lined the protective walls of the log house. They each had a purpose to complete the structure, to support the roof. The ceiling of the living room reached the sky and the tallest wall of the house was filled with huge windows. The windows provided natural light saving the burden of turning on lamps and flipping light switches. Across from this wall of windows was an indoor balcony constructed completely of the same light wood as the rest of the house. The sun from the massive windows barely reached the hanging floor of the balcony. This landing, accessed by wooden stairs, overviewed the entire floorplan of the living room. Down below, where there used to be comfy, plush chairs and a couch, sat cardboard boxes storing away only the memories that could be contained. Two rooms were connected by the balcony strip. One room, colored pink, was owned by a little girl at the sweet age of nine while the other was her little brother's.

    Her room was empty. In the corner there used to sit a dollhouse covered in pink and coated with layers of unforgettable, exciting play sessions, but the dolls had to move out. There used to be a bed with her name painted in white against the lilac backboard. Her dresser, that is now nonexistent, used to hold a small TV and VCR that was tired of playing the same Disney movies over and over. For the first time, she felt uncomfortable in her own room and proceeded to adjust her green shirt and blue jeans, however this did not ease the unsettling feeling. Before, her room filled her nose with the smell of nature and the smell of the wood was crisp. From the windows the sunshine softly heated her little arms. Now, the room reeked of rotting wood. Now the windows showed all of the dust that was brought about due to the moving furniture. She breathed out a shaky sigh knowing this would most likely be the last time she would see this room. She wanted so badly to smell the fresh logs as she did when they first moved in. She wanted to feel joy again. As she took a long inhale to try to capture the soothing fragrance, the thick rotting wood smell filled her lungs, all she got was the disappointing taste of dust filling her mouth. Unsatisfied with the absence of the forever lasting log smell that she loved, the little girl left her childhood room with a bittersweet goodbye.

    Taking each step down slowly let the little girl caress the wooden wall beside the stairs carefully. The wood was smooth just as she would imagine it to be. When her tiny hands came to a rough spot in the wood or an end piece, she gently smoothed her fingers over it anyway. The feeling of the sanded wood against her fingertips was her only refuge. The memories of the little girl's first puppy, her first sleepover, the time the family was at their lowest, and many more were saturated into the wood for years to come. The design of the wood grain was different in every piece. Sometimes she would make shapes out of the darkened wood grains, but today all she saw within the logs were disappointing pictures of drooping flowers and frowning faces. In her wood loving haze, she could faintly hear her parents arguing again about what to keep and what to toss away. They fought often nowadays speaking of the forbidden word of foreclosure.

    "I'm ready," she softly interrupted. These words hurt her ears knowing that she was never going to be ready to leave the logs and the memories behind. Her parents looked to her with shiny eyes, they had been crying. This was the moment that the little girl acknowledged she was crying. She could taste the remains of the salty tears that had fallen hopelessly on her lips. Her younger brother stood idling beside the tall skyscraper stack of boxes. He did not quite grasp the concept of not coming back. The girl smiled to her brother to reassure him there was nothing to worry about. Everything was going to be okay.

    The family of four ushered the last of the boxes into the full moving truck in silence and was at the end of the log house's driveway when they all simultaneously looked back once more. The air was damp, the trees, the planted flowers, and the house all drooped to their lowest. The house already missed them and the loud, animated children's play was now just a whispering memory. With its dark stained exterior logs compared to the light interior, the house looked miserable. The windows were emptied of the light of life. This image of the house would be everlasting in their minds, nonetheless, the memories would be the most vivid. The little girl was losing her home, but she smiled because she still had her family. Then she remembered the night before, when the house was calm before the storm, she promised the logs that she would come back home someday and bring her family along.