We were still living out of boxes, no art on the walls, when we had the security
door hung. Powder coated steel and Marks lock,
smooth throw of the deadbolt, its heavy slam resonated down the street, a new
note added to the house racket, the accumulated sounds
of our caution. The town noise is always changing, leaving a time stamp on each
age. These days car doors snick shut like they’re made of pasteboard.
No more flimsy screen doors slapping to—now it’s the house doors that slam
home with the authority of bank vaults. Such are the sounds
we’re writing on our recollection. Hard to say what sounds my kids will keep, what
nervous note will be the placeholder of this short summer.
The string trimmer’s whine, maybe, or some bending in my voice, the steely tunes
from the Presbyterian carillon, a lawn sprinkler atomizing its steady spray.
I spent most of my growing up in a subdivision ranch-style with an aluminum
storm door, but at the house I can just remember over on Elm Street
I would be halfway across the yard barefoot in the evening grass before the screen
door could clap shut, the sound overtaking me, still overtaking me.