The House on Spring Hollow in the Summer
by Rachel Hungerford
My brother played piano in our living room every day,
Bach and Debussy and Rimsky-Korsakov echoing from the white walls and low ceiling.
My parents watched the Australian Open, the players with their grunts and their anger and their sweat.
The heat outside was solid and damp,
like tallow before they turn it into things like candles and soap,
slippery and weighted.
We watched the finches come to the feeder in the afternoons. They were
yellow and sprightly, the opposite of the heat.
At night, the fireflies came out in hesitant multitudes, like the first notes
of Debussy’s Reverie, softly echoing from the white walls. My parents
listened to the music while they watched the tennis players. The heat
could not touch us inside, where we watched the finches come to the feeder and my brother
played piano in our living room, stroking the keys
as though they were made of tallow, solid and damp, slippery and weighted.
In multitudes, the fireflies emerged from the grass,
in the aftermath of the grunting, sweating anger of the heat—the heat
that was yellow and solid and weighted
like the ball that the tennis players lobbed across the net
while my parents watched
and my brother played piano in the living room.