The house was always waiting for us, even the first time we came home. It was unfamiliar but fell into our lives like a missing piece. The rotating walls of corn and carpets of soybeans were as natural as the seasons to me, and that huge pasture with the lumpy soil and ragged weeds was the best lawn I never had to mow. My room was the only one that overlooked the front pasture, right by the highway. I was the only one who got to see that view at night. In the morning I would wake up and crawl into that huge claw-footed tub, brush my teeth, and prepare myself for the long ride into town for school. I’d stay with my best friend what’s-her-name or go to the library until my mom got off work. Sometimes I was lucky and caught a ride with my older sister, but most of the time I stayed. At home I’d have chores to do and laps to run if I didn’t. Running laps around the empty square pasture in the middle of the night was the harshest punishment my mom could come up with, but I loved it. The only unpleasantness outside on those glorious clear nights was the reek of the garbage cans, but even that sickly sweet charred smell was comforting.
When summer came, the world was our playground. My sister was much too old to play with, and even my brother was beginning to grow out of it, but there were always plenty of friends, neighbors, and cousins. I remember spending days dodging rusty metal and leaping over sheets of shattered glass as we rummaged through the pile of treasure abandoned by life before we moved in. A Shirley Temple thermos, springs, wheels, and an old hand cart were our most fabulous finds.
I spent an entire afternoon with my cousin Travis sitting in the curious old guesthouse at the back of the property knocking down the towers of old bird droppings. The smell in our barn was only an echo of sheep, but still pungent and sharp. We paid no heed to the carpet of droppings and ancient hay when we rolled around, eagerly pressing out eyes to the holes in the floor, breathing in that gray dust from god-knows-where.
Jaunts through the cornfields were the best. It wasn’t ours, but who would know? We never got lost in that hedge maze of razor leaves. Going in shorts and tank tops, city-slicker summer clothes, we never got cut. It was like the farmer who owned the field, whose face I never saw, was parting the corn for us personally and saying go on, have fun, I don’t mind.
But when we wanted to run… Soybeans were the best for running., the wind whipping your hair behind you and pulling the corners of your mouth up into a smile because there’s no one to see, no one in front of you for miles and miles, racing so fast that only God can see me now.
Mock fights with my brother, the clicking of wooden lances longer than ourselves scavenged from the small copse of trees behind our land. There was a little stream in there, not even a stream but a trickle too small for a name, and it ran all the way through the soybeans so we could walk on it in winter. It widened after that, and I suppose you could call it a stream but we never did. The tops of the trees were shadowed by a monstrous piece of farm equipment that I never did learn to the major function of. We used it as a see-saw when the adults weren’t looking, which the rarely do on farms.
Behind the trees was a dead buck that my step-dad shot but couldn’t carry off, and when the corn was cut the world was open to us, and we ran forever tripping over dried-out corn stalks and happy Halloween because what better place to have a Halloween party than an old empty barn? But no one came.
We moved away after a while, to new jobs, new schools, and new lives, but that house never left my heart, oh, until the day I forgot.
Five years later I cam back expecting a flood of warm memories to embrace me and give me a friendly kiss on the cheek. Instead, the land was cold, dark, and hollow. The house had turned its back to me like silent betrayal. I wandered closer, hoping that it was only asleep. Everything was recognizable but something had changed. This wasn’t my place anymore. Lights in the house went on, and I heard voices. As I ran back along that forever-long driveway, I had to tell myself that this was never home but rather a short vacation from life that was never meant to last.
A few melancholy tears flew from my eyes as the wind pulled the corners of my mouth up into a smile.
Summer was over.

wow...that was great...such detail...you are by far the best writer I know...

Nice, very well written. There were a few spots that felt like puncuation errors had taken place there, but eh, it's your writing. (not insulting your writing, but saying it's your style or whatever. . .)

The only title I can think up off the spot would be:

A Short Look (better word would probably be stop) At Paradise.

Or something along those lines. I don't know, if I think fo something better, I'll. . .ghave thought of something better.