Sycamore House

Jasmine licked the minty concoction lining the inside of the envelope several times before it would stick. It was hard for her to see by the flickering gold candlelight but she grabbed a blue Parker from her overnight bag and began writing her new address on the outside of her undelivered mail. As she wrote 1111 Sycamore she glanced out the window to see two dead trees swaying their naked branches in the wind. And thought that the street name must have been derived from those two specifically since there were no others to be found like them on her new street.

She felt at home already as she inhaled the comforting aroma of frankincense, escaping their triangular wax shaped capsules, releasing clouds of caged smoke into the foyer of Jasmine’s new first home. It would be days before she would be able to turn on the electric. She was still waiting on her child support check to be deposited and was living off literally her last bit of change. Mostly aged silver dollars, wheat pennies and a few dusty $2 bills her grandpa had left behind in the old house. She still couldn’t believe he had willed it to her when he abruptly passed on only weeks prior. They hadn’t spoke in several years, maybe in decades but somehow he thought to leave it to her and not to his own son. She couldn’t help but wonder why he left it to her, his granddaughter and not his only son. But then again her dad wasn’t exactly the best son a father could have hoped for, he had been in prison for the last two decades for a wicked murder. She had inadvertently inherited his bad blood and often wondered if she too would commit such crimes only by default. But she knew she could never fathom such and would remain an innocent. She pondered the intrusive thoughts often but would quickly erase such unwanted intrusions from her mind. She looked out her foyer window once more at the little light on the porch. A battery operated stick on device she had bought while grocery shopping for non- perishables recently at the local Piggly Wiggly. Her trip hadn’t been necessary however since her friends and loved ones had come to visit her over the past few days to offer comforts of an abundance of food and predictable, yet delightful, greeting cards as a condolence to her recent loss. She was beyond thankful for their thoughtfulness but mostly importantly for the little yellow house that her grandpa had left behind.