The Porch

We have neglected the porch for years. The railings became loose, and Uncle Samuel ripped them off rather than risk an accident. There is always this fear in Uncle Samuel: he chose certainty of destruction over preservation. Then the steps gave way, broken, in disarray, they expected no mercy after Uncle Samuel's fury. But instead my cousin Jimmy and I rebuilt them one July day of blazing heat. For six hours we labored, then we rested under moon glow. The roof still shaded a row of five pots, gifts from two aunts, Alicia and Gloria, both teachers, who found them in county fairs they browsed in their summer vacations. They were pretty things once, but now cracked and discolored, their dry soil held only dead flowers, brittle, wasted. The flower pots were the most neglected things on the porch, because they were once living things, housing thriving flowers, whose colors and scents fulfilled the purpose of the porch to be the threshold into the life of a family. Indifference doomed the porch. I live among fragments, myself a fragment of a lost family.