big dig

chapter 1: barnboard bookshelves

Ghosted by three generations of writers and artists, I am excavating my way through this old house—a museum of antiques and books and heirlooms. Paintings hanging on faded wallpaper, manuscripts buried in attic chests, memories clinging to dusty dressers.

I move slowly, watchful of the delicate balance of our literary ecosystem. Let’s start with the bookshelves, I tell my mother’s ghost, where you are surrounded by everything you loved. Books on food, England, wildflowers. Old-fashioned boardgames. A photograph of us, embracing.

In the distance, church bells whisper. And I, last in the lineage, creating a legacy for future ancestors.