from The Field

Sara Slingerland Sheiner

The house breathes in or is dead.

Its walls move. Are dark. Its floors are dark. The ceiling, dark. But this is at night. This was the past.

During the day they open all the windows. The doors: the side and the front. Even the cellar door that
goes to the basement.

She – one or the other of them – had a dream again about the attic.

The stairs wouldn’t retract, fold back up into the ceiling.

There was a different kind of breath throughout the house.

But that was the dream. Though it made them itch to remove anything stale that wasn’t also decaying,
changing form.

After the dream, they tore those stairs down. Put up a ladder. Now the attic was always open. They pulled
down every box. Anything they deemed as having been “hidden” from them before. They rearranged.
Put what belonged on the inside to the outside, except for what they wanted to brush against.

They let the animals in.

It didn’t matter.

The house often felt. As if it had arms.

Sara Slingerland Sheiner is a PhD candidate at the University of Denver and is currently working on a 'contraepic' titled The Field, of which this published work is a part. She is also one half of Mars + Chariot, a collaborative divinatory service at the crossroads of astrology + tarot. More information, and her poetry, can be found at sarasheiner.com and @marsandchariot on instagram.