The Deed Outlives the House

The deed sits in a fireproof box, older than the house it names, older than the hands that signed it. Fire took the porch once, the kitchen twice, and still the paper claims the same forty feet of dirt it claimed in 1911. Boundaries drawn by men who are bone now, honored by men who never met them. The land does not remember being owned. It only grows what grows: crabgrass over the surveyor's stake, roots pushing through the old fence line like they never heard the news. Somewhere a grandson pays taxes on a promise made before his father learned to walk, and calls this belonging, and means it.