Where our shoes land tells you where we’ve been, where tiredness overtook us or we decided, This is it, I’m in for the night. This spot below the kitchen table suggests we started talking: his brother, my applicants, the little list we keep of what hasn’t been done — car headlight, fig tree, pest control, and aren’t we almost out of milk?(Yesterday we both went to the store without checking in. The result: four dozen eggs and a line of rice crackers on the shelves.) On my side bags gather in need of emptying. On his a folded paper towel where he rests his elbow. Maybe there are houses where the shoes always land in closets or in a special rack by the front door. But would I want to live there? Here I can trace our days by the places we paused, then unlaced, realizing now I am home.

July 28, 2015