Flying Island

Picture One There is a screen door open and a strange sense of light that looks both warm and eerily green. Vines knit through the doorway and small seedlings grow in the floor and walls. The window was broken out a long time ago, and the punctures appear like stars within the glass. You can see the paneled wood floor and almost make out its lines—like it is also meant to tell you a story of past lives.  Uncle Larry, the youngest of the seven Michels’ kids, watches out for this house and the property around it. He doesn’t try to keep the house up to par but lets nature claim it, like the Navajo belief that old pottery shouldn’t be preserved but return to the clay particles from which it came. The house is a white farmhouse. It has exactly two stories. The second story is where the Michels’ kids lived, one big room. It is supposedly haunted from a boarder Great Grandma Michels’ once kept during the Depression. My grandma, the fourth oldest of the seven children, laughs a...