This Old House: Chapter Three

Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe

They chose me
for my straightness.

For the way I did not bend.

Measured me
against lines drawn by hands
that had never known
what it meant to grow.

I was lifted—
not as I had been,
but as I had been made into.

One length
among many.

Carried
to a place that did not remember
the forest.

The ground was wrong.

Hard.
Packed down by boots
instead of softened by root and rain.

The air held smoke—
not the clean burn of lightning-struck trees,
but something heavier.
Intentional.

They marked the land
as if it had always belonged to them.

Drove stakes into soil
that did not ask to be claimed.

And then—

they began.

The first time they raised me,
it was not with reverence.

No pause.
No recognition
of what I had been.

Just hands,
ropes,
orders shouted into open air.

Lift.

Hold.

Fix in place.

I was set
above them.

Driven into position
with force
that echoed through what remained of me.

Fastened
to others
I did not know.

We did not speak.

We could not.

Not like this.

But I felt them—
the remnants of forests
pressed together
into something rigid,
unmoving,
expected to hold.

This was the structure.

This was the “greater purpose”
they had spoken of
in hushed, hopeful tones.

A house.

It rose quickly.

Faster than anything in the forest
had ever been allowed to become.

Walls closing in.
Rooms taking shape.
A roof stretched tight
over all of us.

And just like that—

we were no longer
pieces.

We were function.

I learned the weight of it
immediately.

Boots above.
Voices below.
The constant, unrelenting pressure
of lives moving
without ever considering
what held them up.

They arrived
before the last nail had settled.

Men, mostly.

Heavy-footed.
Tired in a way
that did not soften them.

They filled the rooms
with noise.

Laughter that hit the walls
too hard.
Arguments that lingered
long after the words had ended.

They brought dirt in with them—
on boots,
on hands,
in the way they carried themselves.

The house took it all.

So did I.

I listened.

Because there was nothing else
to do.

Stories spilled easily
when no one thought
they were being held.

Gold in the hills.
Fortunes just out of reach.
Losses buried
under drink and bravado.

They spoke of leaving
as if it were inevitable.

As if this place
was only ever meant
to be temporary.

None of them
looked up.

Not once.

Not to the beams.
Not to the structure
that kept the cold out,
that held the roof steady
through wind
and the long, restless nights.

I began to understand
the shape of my new existence.

To carry
without being seen.

To hold
without being known.

The house settled around us.

Wood against wood.
Pressure finding its place.

We creaked
in the night—
not from weakness,
but from memory.

Of movement.
Of wind.
Of something other than this.

They called it
old wood.

They were wrong.

It was us
remembering.

Seasons changed
without meaning.

I no longer felt them
as I once had.

No thaw in my veins.
No slow preparation
for winter’s weight.

Only the constant—

the same ceiling,
the same walls,
the same lives
passing through
like weather I could not touch.

And still—

I held.

Because I had been made to.

Because there was no unmaking
what had already been done.

But somewhere,
deep within the grain
they had cut and shaped
and forced into stillness—

something remained.

Not faith.

That had been taken
in the falling.

Something quieter.

A knowing.

That this—
this was not what they had promised.

And yet—

this was where I would stay.

Watching.

Learning.

Becoming witness
to lives
that would never understand
what it meant
to be held.

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Poetry by Britt Wolfe: