Two Poems for Hill House
By Kevin McCann, first published in Here and Now/7beats, July 2012
A young woman travels the highway to her eerie childhood home only to remember why she left in the first place.
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A young woman stealthily leaves her apartment in the early morning. She takes a note that has directions to her childhood home with her. Anxious, she sits behind the wheel before leaving. During a traumatizing night in their childhood, the young woman and her sister are coloring in chalk on the sidewalk. Later, her sister wakes up crying. The young woman continues to think of that house where stones rained through the ceiling. Her mother always told her it was from the neighbors who did not like them. The young woman stops at a diner. She brushes against a man. She gets in her car and passes a sleeping police officer. She takes her exit and practices smiling in the mirror. After spending all day driving with instructions on the passenger seat, the young woman rolls her window down to ask for last-second directions. She makes it to a gate and the gatekeeper says she was the last to arrive. As the young woman pulls around the curve and sees the house, she has an eerie feeling. She changes her mind and turns back.
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