They are not there.

Back in the summer, I returned to the neighbourhood where I spent a big part of my growing up years to discover that our neighbour's house was no longer there.  The foundation was there and the front door, complete with the numbers, and the front steps were still entact, but the rest of it was simply not there anymore. The chunk of front step evoked the essence of what had been and, as always happens when I come across an empty space where a structure once stood, I had that feeling of air sweeping through in a way that it hasn't for about 100 years.  The air circulated through that space in a certain pattern before the walls, for ages and ages, and then it did not and now it does again.

I picture the fights that were had within those walls , the groceries that were put away, and then cooked and eaten and discarded , the floors that were scrubbed, and the roof that was fretted over. The tea that was sloshed onto a table, the phone calls that were missed, the mirrors that were smudged, all the things that occurred within those impermanent walls that likely had once felt like they would never go away. It wasn't even a question. They just were.  Perhaps the inhabitants secretly wished they would disappear or maybe they begged that they never would.  Either way, those walls, between which doors were slammed and tentatively creaked open, they are not there anymore.