2/10/2013

by Yvette Viets Flaten Doll’s House


by Yvette Viets Flaten
Doll’s House                                                            



For the third time in six years

I’ve bought a doll’s house.



The first came from the Salvation Army.

The last two were from garage sales. 

All were home made:  Grandpa cut,

Grandma decorated.  Mom discarded.



I think I bought them because they are

the kinds of homes I never had.  Standard

dimensions.  Six over six.  Cape Cod,

Georgian, Victorian.



Mine were odd, transient.  Ancient French

hovel built before Napoleon, trailer house

at the end of a runway, Spanish piso in a

Roman outpost rebuilt by the Moors

a thousand years later. 



Home, I came to see, is not where

my parents were born, nor where my

grandparents are buried.  It is the spot

I unpack my suitcase for the night, the

place I brush my teeth and crawl between

sheets that cover me like a veil of sand,

soon shifted by prevailing winds.

-originally appeared in Verse Wisconsin