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. . . not just the familiar smells of the furniture and the needs-to-be-refinished flooring and the secretly conspiring dust but also knowing which steps creak most loudly (and which one does not creak at all)

. . . not only the walls that have heard the silent cries and wretched rages as well as sober triumphs but also the windows that see right through you

. . . not just the sureness of the bed, its remembered shapes and moldings just for you

. . . or the tilt of the toothbrush, its nightly resting place

. . .nor even the absence of the alien walls in the pine-drenched forest lakeside

not any of those

and yet all of those

something about the fitness of a worn slipper or even an old shoe that never fit or threadbare pajamas everlastingly worn

not that either

the burnished banister

the hand-polished doorknob

the taste of the water

the rhythm of these clocks

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