The house had a hole in the ceiling, located inside a closet too small to be a closet. We used it as a sort of pantry, since it was an old house and an old kitchen with very little cabinet space. Though the house itself was small the kitchen took up more than half the floorspace. It was added on as a gathering place, like all kitchens were once upon a time; though no one gathered there in recent memory. When it rained at night, one of those heavy Northern Illinois Spring rains that drifted up off the Mississippi, I stayed awake at night, pondering the hole, and what old monsters hid there.

And while I didn’t notice the hole getting bigger, that house and that life was one more thing under erasure.