Beneath the Stairs

photo by Tsabo Tsaboc.

With these words I clear out a little space for myself, like clearing out a cubby hole in the pile of empty suitcases under the stairs. In this little space, I play make believe. I prop up the suitcases by the entrance to form a wall, a flashlight, my pillow and blanket and books. The girl from across the street comes over to play, white sandals on her feet. We sit on our knees and quietly watch each other, sniffle, rub our eyes, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear before laying back on a balled up blanket that I had dragged into my cubby hole earlier. She pretends to sleep while I stare at her. In the furthest reaches behind the stars, in the dark lower steps, lights sparkle from a string of Christmas lights I’d found. Their warm glow illuminates something that I hadn’t noticed before the little girl had showed up. There’s a door. I can just barely squeeze through the opening and crawl along and up a tunnel, until I surface from underground to a morning meadow. Nestled in an island of trees stands a farmhouse and a slowly turning windmill. In the farm yard, white bedsheets are hung out to dry in the sun and breeze, only they undulate too slowly, as though I am watching a film where the frame speed isn’t quite right. That’s it exactly, things aren’t quite right, but who’s to say that it is not perfectly normal on this side of the stairs?

I explore this place for a while, and when I crawl back through the stairs the girl is gone, and my father is yanking suitcases out from beneath the stairs, dragging me out by my collar and scolding me to get out of there, and where is my head. Where is my head, in that place beneath the stairs.