The house mocks me when we are alone. It was here before me and will be here after I am gone. The doors know that those who hung them on their hinges for the first time were dead before I was born. They have been removed and rehung. They have been tinted carnelian, cream, stained to resemble mahogony. The molding around them has been Alice blue, butter yellow. They do not fear me; they know that there is no replacing their clever antique keyholes. They may creak or fail to latch as they wish.
The lathes in the walls sense my fear of crumbling plaster and release bits of their keys. I hear their chinkling laughter falling through the spaces I cannot see. They whisper about me to the bricks below. They dare me to strip them bare and silence them with drywall. They know that I will not call their bluff. Their constant companions, spider crickets and house centipedes, watch and wait from under radiators and from dark basement corners, content with the awareness that their ancestral claims supercede mine.
Outside, wood and iron challenge me to races that I cannot win, an eternal relay from rot to rust and back again. The mahonias set their buds, release their scent yearly, remind me of those who passed before me but did not outlast the house.
I surrender. I run my hand along the worn banister, redefine the peeling paint as quaint and stylish, watch the mud daubers build their nests. What the house doesn't know is that victory is mine, our battles rendered moot by conquering myself.