covered · front of house · last swept after the rain
where the porch-post meets the house-wall and the planking turns inward toward the door, there is a corner only one person ever stands in. a pair of boots, the leather greyed with old salt. a galvanised can with a thumb-sized dent. a small slate on a leather thong for hanging on the door, which is hung instead from a nail in the post.
seed packets used to be stacked here, weighed down with a stone. a basket of windfalls in late summer. a sleeping dog in two seasons. the boots are the only constant, and the boots seem to have absorbed everything else that the corner once held.
a cat from no household crosses the planks here in the early hour and is never seen leaving. a child sits on the top step with both palms on the boards, watching rain off the gutters. the keeper stands here for the length of one cigarette they no longer smoke.
field-note: the planks are darker in this corner from the slow drip of the eave, which is half an inch off true.