i was somebody's home

Greg Fallis

The trailer: I was somebody’s home. A new home, once. Purchased by a retired couple, moved to a friendly community near a creek, settled under a few modest trees that would, in time, become something spectacular. The old couple grilled out in the summer and hunkered down in the winter, were liked by their neighbors, were content with their lives until he died. She sold the mobile home and moved to an assisted care facility, where she grew silent and dreamed at night that she was still young and walking beneath willows beside a creek.

Seven other couples moved in over the years, six moved out. The last—a young man, a welder by training, employed by a small business repairing semi-trailers. His wife, a young woman who worked part-time as a waitress in a Tex-Mex restaurant, always looking for more hours, always feeling guilty about not being a full-time mother for their child. Their child, well-loved, chubby, rarely cranky but always cranky at the worst possible times, attached to his bear though increasingly showing a preference to a red plush bunny.

Two years they lived there. They’d seen the nearby creek flood before. But not like it did the last time. Nothing at all like the last time.

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