I was maybe ten years old when I found the burned out house in the woods. I was told to take the dog with me, for safety, but the dog wouldn't follow me all the way in. She just cocked her head at me and stood there at the tree line. I took my brother instead. We went back there in the woods in November, and we found it.

It was the concrete foundation of a house, but of course we were disappointed that it was "only a basement." We dug through years of fallen leaves, found bits of broken china in the dirt, took it back to our parents like it was archaeology. I never learned when the house burned down, or how.

There was a dump back there, too, or it could have been a demolished house- or both. My brother came back from there, dragging a piece of hexagonal floor tile in one hand, and a toilet seat in the other. In our minds, it was all the same.

I wonder, sometimes, if I was digging in a graveyard.

Do you go BACK OUTSIDE?