The Never House

She went to buy a house, sight unseen. A silly thought, but she was seized by an impulse. Drawn to the listing, she was led down a street by a seller, a bargainer, a nonsense waster of words. Who had no words for why the house was not there. Which never seemed to have been, in existence, that they could see.

The wrong street, it must have been. The wrong end. Something off. Something of a mistake. She stood and stared into the empty space as the seller squabbled over phone with office staff. She searched the vacant scrap of land for the home she sought, that she seemed to see.

Nothing, but what she felt for what lay beyond. Something familiar, something warm, which called out to her. She imagined someone was watching her from the shadows of that sunlit day, and so there was. For in this house that she could not see there stood a man at a window, who saw her. Who had been waiting for her.

How he had waited, how he had longed for her to come, and how he now yearned for her to stay. His thoughts reached out to her, finding their way across the distance that remained. He wanted to hold her, touch her, keep her close. And she felt him like a warm wind, blowing around her, pulling her homeward.

Then in the split of a second the sense dispersed and she was righted by the voice of the seller; the sale, gone awry. She was regaled with some semblance of a sorry, and she was whisked away. Separated from what might have been.

As she walked away the man at the window watched her go. His heart was heavy, he had waited so long. He watched as she looked over her shoulder, back toward the something she couldn’t see. To the him she had always known. She would come back, he was certain. So he would wait, again. Now she knew where he was, it wouldn’t be long, before she would come home.