Whoever Comes Next
次に来る誰か
Whoever climbs the hill next will believe, exactly as I did, that the house stands empty.
She will carry a solicitor's , and whoever she is, she will not carry a key.
The key will find her instead, warm in a pocket that should have held nothing at all.
By the time she notices, she will already have forgotten the ordinary life she left behind.
Whoever enters through that door surrenders far more than she can possibly know she is giving.
From within the walls I will whisper to her, gently, the way my grandmother once whispered to me.
"You mustn't be afraid," I will say; "the house only wants to keep you a little while."
By her third morning she will have found the photograph, and it will already have begun changing.
Whoever she was before the hill will have faded, softly, into whoever the house now requires.
She will count her mornings, and the counting will be precisely how the house keeps her .
By the time she reaches the mirror, she will have forgotten she ever wished at all to leave.
And whoever waits inside that clouded glass will step out, gladly, to wear her face.
Then she will join us in the walls, one more voice in the patient, endless, murmuring .
Whoever comes after her will hear us and mistake our warnings for the settling of old wood.
By next winter the town will swear she has lived here, , for fifty quiet years.
Whatever records exist will have rewritten themselves to hold her name in faded, certain ink.
She will bake bread on Sundays for neighbours who will have always, somehow, known her well.
And whoever doubts the house will discover, far too late, that is simply how it begins.
I feel the new key warming now, far below, in a coat fresh from some distant cleaner's shop.
Whoever owns that coat is climbing the hill already, in hand, expecting an empty house.
By she will have turned the key she never asked for in a lock that already knows her.
Whatever she was, whatever she once hoped, the house will have quietly gathered it all inside.
And I, who was myself once given to these walls, will her the only way I can.
Lying awake beneath a strange , she will hear the wallpaper begin, softly, to murmur.
Whoever you are, reading this in your own new house: check your pocket. The key is already warm.