the house of no ghost

I dream of houses.  Every night it is a new one.  Every night we move.  We pick bedrooms, we sweep old floors, we stack dishes in cupboards.  And I look for ghosts.

The house of last night has to be my favorite so far.  It was big, not too big.  I remember rich wood and crisp blue windows, fireplaces, and bookshelves.  I liked the deep driveway and the side entrance into a large mudroom with the green-tinted brass coat hooks, warm straight benches, and a raw wood chair rail girdle.

But what I liked best was this house had no ghosts.

They say when you dream of moving it is dreaming of change; change that needs to happen or change coming. I would believe that but I would also note I am the child of Realtor.  Each weekend our dad would take us with him to tour the houses he was listing.  My sisters and I would pick out our rooms.  We would rebuild our lives in a new house, on a new street, often in a new part of the city.

We were always about to move.  We never did.  My parents lived in the house on Herbert Ave for over 30 years.  My whole childhood and the entire length of my first marriage.

I dream of the white house I grew up in as it was.
I dream of a yellow house that sits alone on a concrete lot.
I dream of a blue house down in a glen on the edge of a wilderness.
I dream of a wooden house we are literally digging out of a mountain of dirt.
I dream of a pair of tall gray houses out in a golden field.

I dream of houses so haunted I wake shaking.

All summer I struggled to sleep.  When the heat was finally replaced by rain I slept deep and late for a week.

Within that sleep, I wandered the hallways of lost houses.  Rummaging through boxes looking for my coffee maker.  Wondering how I would be able to sleep in strange rooms wrapped in a cloud of lingering souls.

The dream house of last night had a tiny kitchen right in the center of the house- exactly how I like them.  It was surrounded by the big trees of my childhood; trunks with peeling paperbark and tops too high to see. The front room was flanked with bay windows with the idea that a dark turning sea was just out of sight.

The back of the house had the perfect nook of a room for a family den- a place to tuck away a tv.  A place to hide deep in the bowels of the house and pretend not to be home.  There were French doors hooded in dark wood that led to a shaded yard full of something wild almost dangerous.

I loved that house even I as turned to look for the stairs and realized there were none.  The house had no bedrooms.

I stood in the center feeling the solidness of the beams, the weight of the plaster on the walls hugging me tight.  I was aware of the lightness of the unreachable floors above me.  All around me, out of sight my family moving around boxes.  Moving the same boxes in and out.  The house never filling.

Always moving in never getting to the living there moment.

Three nights ago I carried the ghost of a little boy from a dim yellow room off a matted mattress in an attempt to save him from the other ghosts lurking in the halls.  His spirit was waxy in my arms.  His body the yellow color of fading bruises.  I set him down in the dark of midnight in the wet grass beside the long eggshell house that looked more like a desert worn motel than a home.  In the windows, the ghosts walked by looking out at us.

Gray and torn faces, unwashed windows, long narrow halls, and pipes for handrails.

I dream of houses that fill with green water.
I dream of houses that light with black flame.
I dream of houses that never end.
I dream of houses of changelings, houses of brick, houses that shape-shift under layers of dust.

I dream of change every night.
I carry boxes.
I make plans.
We never quite move in.

But I think I have finally found a house I could live in.
The house of no bedrooms, no dreams, no sleep... the house of no ghosts.