When We Talk About History by Catherine Cosgrove

there’s a yellow house on the street that shares our last name,

and how it flooded when the snow melted and carried tension to the ceiling

and grey March runoff began bobbing beneath cedar floorboards.

The story is worn down, threadbare and yawning

on its stubby legs, taking one last go around.

And history is subjective like a furrowed brow transfixed in sorrow and asserting:

If we lived here we’d be home. And it doesn’t really matter

if you never understood how her mouth slid against the words, or why every street

reminded her of South Buffalo and that she used to take three buses

and a streetcar to school, how she wanted to pay twenty dollars

in 1945 to change her name to Elaine, because Phyllis was stodgy and unremarkable.

Everything comes back to the faded yellow house that straddles Lake Erie

and the street that isn’t named for us, but holds us all the same –