Fix-Me-Up

There was a woman who loved a broken house.


              She found it shattered and dilapidated, worn weak in its frame by the abuses of history. The paint was washed out by a single, or perhaps even a series of powerful storms, as paint is wont to do, when faced with the scorn of sky. She found the house distrustful of her. Unsure of her touch, it flinched back as she tried to lay her hand on its face. It was unsure to trust this woman to live within it, as the previous tenant had not been kind. They let it fall apart. They left it to face storms and time alone. How could it so easily trust a new human?


There was a woman who loved a broken house.


               This woman had a name, but this has chipped away, lost to time like old paint to a storm. Whether her name was Daria, or Alma, or even Frieda did not matter. Names matter not to a broken house. No matter your name, the windows are still punched in, the beams are still rotten and the ceiling still molded. The house worried that at any moment the roof would come tumbling down. That the rot in its beams would finally destroy it. Of the feelings the house was capable of, fear was its most intimately known. Of course, there was contempt, as it had never seen good treatment aside from those who built it long ago; it could not imagine being proper treatment as a possibility. There was sorrow, for being left in such a sorrowful state, and there was also a thick dollop of self-loathing, since if no one else had ever loved the house, then how could it love itself? But yes, fear was the most familiar of feelings for this house. Fear of the future, fear of the past, and fear of every woman that ever lived.


There was a woman who loved a broken house.


                When she first moved in, she did not stay with the house for long intervals. They were distant at first. The house knew she did not care, and this was acceptable, as it had expected this. Her heart, however, was warm, and slowly, almost unnoticeable at first, she began to piece the house back together. She started by marking down every broken place in a notebook. Every structural piece that needed adjusting and fixing. She vanished for some days, and the house did not see her and assumed that it had yet again been abandoned, but it was not. She returned and had its punched out windows replaced and tempered and sealed so that the elements could no longer enter freely.


There was a woman who loved a broken house.


               She began to spend more and more time with the house. She took to it and it took to her. She cleaned the floor of dust and spiders. They shared an afternoon together, painting the sides of the house and another afternoon painting the inside. The house watched as she built up coat after coat of protective paint and as she dusted away layer after layer of harsh times and spider-bitten memories. Though painful at first, the woman had the rotting beams replaced by sparkling new ones, and the molded ceiling redone in clean white tiles. The pain of removal quickly gave way to a new feeling, filling the house, as if a faucet had been left running. No longer did the fear of imminent collapse haunt this hearth.


There was a woman who loved a broken house.


               As she restored the strength of the house, she also restored its spirit. Its walls clean and its beams ready to carry the weight of an attic of new memories. When she smiled at the house, it smiled back, not with apprehension, but with confidence. She had delved into that secret place within the house that no one else had dared to go and she came back alive. She did not run from this house. She killed the spiders of the cellar, even the biggest and blackest. She tempered the windows against even the strongest storms. And yet. There was something in it that was unsure. Though it felt clean, it still did not feel warm. It remembered that in its childhood it had warmth in its soul. Something that kept it happy even when there was no clear reason. When the house made apparent to the woman how it felt, she knew what it meant and she fixed it, just as she had with everything before.


There was a woman who loved a broken house.


                It was like a magical ritual. She locked all the doors of this house, turned off all forms of communication with the outside and interned herself within the house. And it in turn did the same. Together they were locked in, with only each other to have as examples of how to breathe the air. The woman played her music aloud. She danced and sang and spun and burned. The house filled with her solar, august warmth. She had so much of it to spare, and the more she gave to it, the more she seemed to have had. At the end of the day, they watched the sun set and the moon rise. It grew dark and the hearth of this house yearned for a new fire. She built it for him. He lit it. He felt so alive again.


There was a woman who loved a broken man.


             But she no longer loved a broken man. Now, she simply loved a man. And he loved her.