Wind, creaks, chimes

A gust and a creak, our house turns sonorous, plucked like a guitar string by the wind. With each of the building’s groans I picture a beam swaying behind the plaster, imagine a crack opening in the wall. The house sounds from its flaws and weaknesses, in my mind. This is a metaphor as well for my memories. The breeze of a chance line in a novel, read off the page for a writing exercise, and a retaining wall in my personality rasps, sounding a bad memory - my dad, shouting, my mom, shouting. This response to the wind is evidence of a broken structure always about to break through the paint hiding it, in my mind. Changing the metaphor I picture out of tune wind chimes playing an ugly chord, bad memory clanging into bad memory into bad memory. That captures the noise and duration of it better, but also better states - makes - the truth of the matter: it’s just noise, nothing is falling apart and the clatter subsides, and these chimes sit on a hook at the corner of this home, not central to its architecture nor a sign of its value, merely left there thoughtlessly by previous owners. Some spring day I’ll get out the ladder and take them down.

(Wrote this as an exercise in response to a line from a novel.)