Resounding Little Voices

How Abandoned Houses and Things Left Behind Thread Through My Life

The first abandoned house I remember exploring was across from the grocery store my mom and I skipped to, arm in arm, when I was a kid. We had seen its decaying Victorian turrets peeking above the abundance of neglected foliage many times before braving its withered threshold. Early one Spring, we ventured into that liminal space and I don't believe I ever completely left. Inside reeked of piss and mildew. Broken bottles and yellowed newspapers made a foul floor for weekend teenagers. But in the center – beneath a makeshift skylight and its funnel of wintry, warm, yellow sun – grew a single white tulip. I had my dad’s old and heavy Petri around my neck — I always did back then and had bruises to prove it from its banging around on my boney chest. I took a blurry photograph, which I found amongst my mom’s things when I cleaned out her house after her death.

We visited a lot of abandoned houses over the years and my photographs slowly came into focus. We’d find clothes — mildew and skunked — and we’d climb into them and pose. I put an old polio brace on, with a half-rotted tank top and stained long-john cut-offs and sat on the sodden bed with my friend Jared who was garnished in glasses and a cap from the place, crutches held in his hands. My mom’s parter Albert snapped the photograph.

On our first date, I took Walter to another abandoned house I’d frequented. A few weeks later we’d visit two in one day and the police found us on both occasions and reprimanded us. Though the police have stopped me before, they had never before shooed me away.

Nowadays, I skip the houses altogether, but there is a longing to return to this strange archaeology. Katie just told me there is a house near her parent’s house that is calling and I hope we go before it is torn down. I never got to know a house or it’s inhabitants as well as I came to know The Rementers, though I have a lot of fragments from other people’s lives sprinkled amongst mine. I came to think of them as resounding little voices, these things left behind. I had intended to use the title for a picture book I’d started, but when it too was abandoned, I repurposed it as I do.

But I’d like to find my way back… see?!

What should we name her, the Pointer?!

Now for the poems:

Poems about an Abandoned Rementer House in Skippack, Penna

Søren and I sat down to draw yesterday and to the ASMR of his pencil scribbling, I started to draw in this little sketchbook, the Rementer’s things. I am loving this process of filling a small book on one subject. This will lead me to the story I’m certain…

If you were to die and leave your house and all of your belongings behind, would you be pleased to see strangers exploring and getting to know you by picking through what remains? Or rearranging the yous you left behind for this altogether new interpretation?

Or would you prefer a bulldozer straight away?

Furry inhabitants? Do tell.