This House

By Savannah Cooper

This house makes noises, creaking floors 
sounding with the thuds of footsteps, shifts 
and stretching. Just settling, we say, just 
showing its age. But this house is younger 
than me, and I wonder how I reveal my years, 
the dust lining my ribcage, the groaning 
of muscle and bone. Perhaps my kneecaps 
are haunted, crackling and popping 
with every bend, ghosts playing jazz 
and snapping transparent fingers. Cobwebs 
in my head, sleeping bats in the rafters 
of my skull. Maybe each step I take leaves 
an invisible print, a watered-down echo, 
and my noises join those of this house, 
both quiet and loud, the ones in the day 
easily dismissed, the ones at night sending 
a persistent shiver down the spine. 

Savannah Cooper (she/her) is a leftist bisexual agnostic and a slow-ripening disappointment to her Baptist parents. You can almost always find her at home, reading a novel or cuddling with her dogs and cat. A Pushcart Prize nominated poet, her work has been previously published in Parentheses Journal, Midwestern Gothic, Mud Season Review, and multiple other publications.