Floorboards

The floorboards have given their grain to women on knees, scrub brush in hand, skirts dragging and tripping toddlers. I can hear the humming of chore songs as I sweep carrot tops and chard stems into a dustpan, into the bucket, into the garden. There is history in each fallen fiber, each worn plank speaking stories of pioneers, of fishermen and farmers on an island in the Sound. 

I can feel ridges of time when I sweep.

The kitchen slopes to the west and I know I am at home (for now, for now), my galley sloping towards the fields instead of the sea but listing nonetheless. The wainscoting up a narrow flight of stairs twisting into the wooden shoulders of the little pale green house takes me to Maine, takes me to memories forgotten under quilts and jelly jars. The sandy soil of the backyard garden sifts through my hands like it did in San Diego. 

I am made up of places, stacks of maps build my body, oceans run through my heart and veins. This place collates the corporal remembrance into a home of all the places I’ve ever been and will ever be. All the generations that I have been, the stars of the universe falling as dust onto the swollen grain swept back and forth, back and forth, handles manipulating bristling scotch broom or plastic. 

I am on my knees, sweeping and scrubbing and wondering how these pieces fit together. I am wondering if the women in their long skirts and pale torsos, bonnets and rough hands, if they ever dreamed of being back on the wagon train. 

I wonder if they woke in the night with the movement of wooden wheels underneath scratchy boards long after the wheels had ceased spinning and dissolved into the front yard under the apple trees. 

I wonder if they stared into the sky and remembered long days of nothing but motion toward a home they had yet to build, one that filled up their dream space with longing and hope for warmth and comfort. 

I wonder if they laughed to themselves in their disillusionment or sighed with contentment, grounded and growing. 

I imagine her standing at the doorway, staring at the rising sun to the east, figuring what to cellar for the winter, retracing paths taken years prior through prairies and rivers and night. 

I sweep the stars into the dustpan and walk through the vibrant weeds to the compost pile. I catch glimpses of my garden where arugula sprout tender half moons and the peas will soon need to be trellised. 

I have arrived out west and made a home. The floorboards are swept and lovely.

And yet I can’t seem to stop them wheels from turning even when there is nowhere west to go but the ocean.

(And then there’s that.)

Shall I take up my skirts and run into the waves or take the wheel?  

Or go with the grain and sink my seeds into the earth, one by one, day by day, love by love until the tugging ceases to pull me west?