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July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. I’m in the process of selling my home. Since I’m running out of time for a story today and don’t want to fall further behind, here’s a rant. Stick around after the story to read the poem I wrote on the same topic.
An Easy 11-Step Guide to Selling Your Home
- Get your house ready for showing. Purge every scrap of personality your home has. There can be no art on the walls. There can be no plushies on the bed. They don’t matter. Only your granite counter tops matter.
- Find a realtor you like. You may wish to meet with a few of them before you decide who to go with. The deciding factor should not be if your realtor has a cool accent or likes your cats. But if he has a cool accent and likes your cats, that’s a big plus.
- If your house is fit for a sexless robot to live in, it’s time to schedule showings and open houses. You must hide all evidence that a human lives in this house. Remove all trash cans. Make sure all the books on the shelf are non-controversial and for display purposes only. Hide all cat furniture. You have to pretend that the cats don’t live here, even though they will follow prospective buyers around for the whole showing and take naps on your realtor.
- Get kicked out of your house repeatedly so strangers can look at it and then tell you they hate your bathroom decor.
- Look on Zillow and secretly judge your neighbor’s houses that are on the market.
- It’s been two months, and this sucks. Consider buying a Saint Joseph statue to bury in your yard.
- Change your mind about buying the statue. If your mom found out she would think that you’re becoming Catholic again and would get too excited.
- Besides, you tried to throw out a broken Virgin Mary statue during the initial purge, but the bag it was in ripped and paint splashed everywhere on the newly power-washed patio. Decide it’s best not to mess around with more statues of holy figures.
- Explain to your non-Catholic friends why it’s not idolatry, not really, and that even ex-Catholics love a good religious statue.
- Just accept that this is a deeply weird and frustrating experience, but at least you got a poem out of it.
- But also if you don’t get any offers soon, you’re getting the damn statue.
Selling Your Home is a Deeply Weird Experience
We begged and fought
to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars
on 1,700 square feet.
We signed the papers. We laid a stake.
This is ours.
No one can take it from us.
This is our home.
My territory is 1,700 square feet
with high ceilings and beige walls,
nubby carpets, a creepy door.
My territory is new granite countertops,
a rebuilt fence
years of love and work
and every picture hung on the wall.
And now–
anyone can come into my territory.
I must smile and welcome them.
Hope that one of them will want to beg and fight for 1,700 square feet.
But all I want to do is snarl.
Overlooked Books 