"The New Owner Invited Me In" by Katie Manning

The New Owner Invited Me In

Your house is the setting of my earliest stories: where we’d play Candyland at the coffee table, where I’d ride my red tricycle on your porch, where we’d pretend to be farmers with my stuffed animals all over the living room, where I once mistook my uncle’s snore for a bear’s growl in your hallway.

Your house is also my mind’s blueprint for every other house. James finds the giant peach beside my swing set in your backyard. Charlotte spins her web above my tricycle on your porch. Harry Potter’s letters from Hogwarts pour out of your fireplace. Jane Eyre reunites with her wounded Mr. Rochester in your spare room.

Your house is someone else’s house now. The soft mints that look like large teeth are not in a glass dish on the coffee table. The clock — that anniversary gift I couldn’t keep secret — is no longer on the wall. Your jacket and shoes are not in the hall closet. The stories have flipped. Now you are the fiction I imagine in this place.

Katie Manning

Katie Manning is the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and an
associate professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San
Diego. She is the author of Tasty Other, which won the 2016 Main Street
Rag Poetry Book Award, and four chapbooks, including The Gospel of the
Bleeding Woman. Her poems have appeared in december, New Letters, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and many other journals and anthologies. Find her online at www.katiemanningpoet.com.

Headshot: Marcus Emmerson

Photo Credit: Staff