On Homecoming By Vasilios Moschouris

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On Homecoming
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​1.   The old house tries its best not to be found; shrouded in twisting locks of Spanish moss and sweeping willow branches, it is invisible     
       even from the road it sits on, and that road appears on no map, returns a blank search result. I find it only with memory.

2.    When I lay down to sleep the first night I hear noises and can’t be sure if they’re real—little taps like the footsteps of mice across the   
        wooden floor. They do not wake me but seep into my dreams, where silhouetted creatures crawl under my blankets, over my chest,   
        and when half asleep I sit up to peer over the edge of my bed I cannot tell them from shadows.

3.   The neighbor makes noises. Hammering things and revving engines. So infrequently and just far enough away that when I hear them   
       through the walls I think someone is at my door. I ignore them as best I can. I check the door every time. 
 
4.   The inside of the house has not changed except for where it has. Hands of clocks all stuck in place. Old pictures of us lining the walls. 
      The kitchen, the bedroom, the living room, all the old spaces waiting to be filled. Spiders have built webs in all the corners; mice leave 
       droppings, chew holes in the walls. Maybe that is how change works, how it should: not revealing itself until it has already passed. 
 
5.   This morning I open the window to let real light in and there is a man outside—the neighbor—standing with his back to me. Not in the
       yard but where the trees that marked its edge used to stand. In the years since I’ve been back here he has cut them down. He is large. A
       foot taller than me, a long graying beard, black eyes deep set into the folds of his face. I drop the curtains shut—I don’t want him to see 
       me seeing him.
 
6.   When I was a child I was afraid of things that lived in the cracks of things, beings I could only see pieces of. In my first nightmare
      something like a snake pushes itself through the hall outside my door, and I watch it pass, waiting for its scaly body to taper off into a tail
      end, but it never does.
 
7.   I spend the days setting traps, cleaning droppings, patching holes, but there are always more the next day, and the traps are never full.
       Where are they coming from?
 
8.   A mile down the road there is a park, and in the park there is a spring: deep and blue and green, and every minute of every day I want to
      go down to it, cast myself into it like a stone, sink down to its primal mouth, open, waiting, and be consumed.
 
9.   What is he doing? I watch him through the sliver of the window, his body passing in and out of sight. He has friends. They have shovels.
       One of his engines purrs, incessant, encircling; tires larger than myself roll past. He is encroaching, his life spilling over into mine. 
 
10.  The house keeps changing. New holes in old spaces, new noises in the silence. The traps are empty. Engines rev. The traps are full. I do
​         not look outside. The spring waits down the road, waters as new and as familiar as the morning. I check the clock. It is always the same           time. It will never be this time again. 


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Vasilios Moschouris is a gay stay-at-home writer and Best of the Net nominee from the mountains of North Carolina. For now, he lives in Wilmington, where he is completing his MFA in Creative Writing at UNCW, and raising two unruly novels. His writing has appeared in Chautauqua Magazine, Trampset, Roi Fainéant Press, and the museum of americana. Find him at vasiliosmoschouris.com or, if you must, @burnmyaccountv on Twitter.

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