We drove down the dirt road off the main one, drove into the little graveyard. The stones were rain wet, the grass was rain wet. Everything smelled like the same earned sweat. We parked between the grave that read The mad Russian of Oysterville and the one commemorating the two unknown sailors lost at sea. Down the road a little ways we stepped over crotch-high barbed wire. We walked down a small hill.

The house, caved and lopsided, really seemed to be floating in the grass. The grass was yellow and tall in places and short in places and moved like water when the wind blew. The beams of the house were black and quiet. It was like looking into the marble eyes of a deer. It was enough to look at it, enough to stand there again. To witness a quiet as natural as breath. It was enough to lift that which this life had heaped on me, lift it just long enough to look at the house before we walked back to the truck.

    Matthew Wallenstein the 2022 winner of the Writer's Award for poetry from the Nassau Review. His short story collection Buckteeth was published in March of 2020. He is the Author of the poetry collection Tiny Alms (Permanent Sleep Press, 2017). His work has previously been published by The University of Chicago,  The Emerson Review, The University of Maine Farmington, among others.