Vignette 6

There is a missing room in my house. I can feel it. There is an open space between the back wall of the living room and the yard that the window looks out upon. There is another room that the window hides because the window deceives us to believe that it looks directly out into the world where other things happen, beyond the walls of this house. In the missing room, I'll bet there's a place to build a fire. Every time I see smog haze over the horizon I know that the haze didn't come from elsewhere. I know that the smog that creeps into our atmosphere didn't come from manufacturing plants in China. I'm convinced that the smoke on the horizon came from the fire that burns in the missing room of my house. No one goes into that room, because we don't know how to get to it. But if I could, I would put out the fire that burns in that room. Our house is getting too hot and the air is hard to breathe.