in a moment flash the lightbulbs behind the yellow glass doors, broken by a baseball in a dewy sunny morning while the clothes are hung to dry and the marshes smell of feces and decay. the look on their faces is red and pimply, their eyes are tightly creased behind plump cheeks and overhanging eyebrows. tears, whether from happiness or sadness, make sparkles at the corners. the yellow glass door is open, swinging on a hinge, forgotten. the plants are withering, one can see where the sun was because they lean like an invalid against the pane in that direction. i'm taking my time in circumnavigating the property, i know its limits, its tiny threshold. i stare down at my feet, or else in a small radius around me, imagining the surface features as huge, as though i am lost in a barren forest. i hope that when i look up i see not the house but an endless tract of foreign features, a place i'd never seen before. i spy a path that goes up the little hill, through a bed of moss and wildflowers. i turn around and far out white dots mark swans in the marsh, in pairs.