an accumulation of signs

we mostly live by ourselves now.  it's just joe and me in our mostly tidy house.  the kid is here maybe one or two nights a week, but sometimes i become aware that he has been home while we're at work.  because i see in patterns, i read his signs easily.

the following represents an accumulation of signs of his passage taken over several visits.  i don't know why this interests me, but i find it comforting to find his traces in the house, even now when we don't see so much of him.  as soon as i see the first sign, i float through the house gathering up the rest, putting together a picture of his presence, imagining him going about his life while it intersects briefly with the place we all call home.  as a reader, i glean from the signs, putting together stories.  like a little animal, i shamble about, room to room, sniffing up evidence, reconstructing the path that other little animal took.

which doesn't always make me popular.  i was asked last night via text if i make it a practice to go through the trash when i get home.  as a rule, no, i don't.  but when i notice something interesting in the bin, i might ask about it.  

but i can't help it.  it comforts me to see these markers of my boy's existence in our house still.       i like knowing he was here even when i wasn't.  the little signs he leaves behind make me happy, even when i'm picking up the bath mat for the ten-thousandth time.

a jacket on the hearth,
sometimes a backpack

toss-away coffee cup,
generally in the trash.  sometimes
soda bottles in the recycling.

laundry doors left open.
i always close them.

that pesky bath mat just doesn't hang itself

sometimes new artwork appears

sometimes a new single on the coffee table