The Pink Cottage

Nothing happens. Four old structures stand stiffly in assembly, formatting a rectangular plane. All edges, the edges depicted by the symmetrical arrangement of these houses, glare inward in a staring contest that began a long time ago, quietly waiting for perpetuity’s abandonment. Two rims of the framework are losing, gently crumbling under the still, silent tension. A hollow is carved, a break in the divide between an organized vicinity and the untamed forest that would soon invade. In the tide of time’s delicate pull, nature prevails, swallowing everything in its enduring cycles. Nothing happens.

This cleared area is tucked behind wooded trails, followed by a Private Property sign and a gate hinged to a crooked fence that wraps partway around the grassy terrain, loosely segregating striking scenery from yard. A sandy trail carves its way around the inside perimeter of the buildings, carriage wheel tracks slicing through, encircling the four structures countless times, countless and enduring as a clock ticking mockingly at the passive stillness in which the aging buildings are confined to. The display of houses encases a small grass field. Raised in the center is a stone-stacked frame surrounding a fractured grave: Pierre Bernardey, 1827. A piece of verse follows, the weathered stone illegible, and weeds crawling and finding home between the cracks that spider across the headstone. The grave sits eerily in its apparent age and is ignored. Living history, the axis on which the activity within the fenced-in square rotates, yet it is the center. It does not move. History can only wait as it obliterates itself, gradually forgetting and being forgotten. It lies gloomily before the surrounding structures.

The southern boundary of th...

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.... The lovely, awful stinging nettle blossom in spring’s cool breezes, and summer’s foals slouch awkwardly in the shade next to Bernardey’s house. And close by a copperhead finds salvation in the damp shadow under our air conditioning unit. Three goats stand in a tree. A vulture looms overhead in steady, creeping loops above the canopy. The night sky glows. The stars rotate like the wagon wheel formation splattered on the yard, pivoting steadily until broken and abandoned by the clock. Time turns in nature’s grasp. In the quiet illusion of this enclosed fortress, the familiar rooster has been seen strutting side-by-side with an owl, in midday. Another day, an owl plummets toward the ground, scooping up a rattlesnake in its talons, bumping the snake’s head on the fence on the way back up, all under the still and silent eyes of these aging, enduring monuments.