Things I expected

Stars. Water pots boiling near strike-on-box matches. A red jacket. A red bunk bed older than a box of recipes. Two sheds full of marmots. Wild mushrooms. The scent of almonds like an antique stove. Camp robbers and brown finches undercut with yellow. Creaking doors--a storeroom of quilts. Sunlight on morning frost. Swarming flies. A mason jar for clothes pins, red licorice, animal teeth. The churning of a radiator. Initials carved around the eyes of aspen. Two years of growth: pine needles against the old caulk of windowpanes. My grandfather at work.