Yellow Cottage, Part 2

I have a dear friend who I met in my Creative Writing class my freshman year in college.  I sent the poem to her for her comments and edits because I knew she would make it better, and she did! Most of her adult life after college, she was an editor.  Not that it matters, but she knows this cottage that I write about, and the man who lived with me in it.

The Yellow Cottage

Nestled between two imposing stories,

Squat, hunkered down,

Protected by a white picket fence,

Two blocks from the deep blue bay,

Where sea lions bark and gulls squawk,

And the foghorn sounds.

I stood outside the fence,

Camera raised and clicking,

Trying to capture a time 

When I entered, with groceries and textbooks,

To find comfort on the couch.

My love and I lived within these cottage walls --

    one bedroom,

    a serviceable kitchen,

    no laundry.

The years to come, just a dream --

Two hapless youths on our way.

Hope lived within us.

I stand before the cottage, decades on,

And he is gone, far too young.

I wonder at the life within those walls,

And yearn, once more, to enter that space

and absorb whatever energy and insight

The yellow cottage has to give.

Țară Crowley, 2024