To all who enter here

The blue door. The brass doorknob. The wreath I weave around autumn and Christmas. Then— muddy boots, coats, a smell like jute and pine. When the sun shines just right, the whole place lights up like a church, and the dust dances golden and shimmering.

The hallway: striped carpet, Cinderella staircase, more shoes, more clutter, but it’s lovely. The hallway where we had that big party. The whole place was filled with 50 people, most of us musicians. We played Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Bon Iver, and I’m not sure when I have been happier than dancing there with you.

Then the kitchen, and it’s colossal and warm and reminds me of France. A big sink and a seven-burner hob (one for each of us). The fridge is as big as a walk-in closet that flings blue light at midnight hours most nights. The table. The chairs. This winter, we spent hours foraging for the perfect lichen-covered stick to rest above the table. Old man’s beard draped like the mist over the morning lawn. This kitchen has seen dinner parties and tired morning faces and teary eyes and perceptive glances and prayers and apologies.

It has also seen goodbyes.

Now down two wooden steps that creak sometimes at 1 am when I sneak into the sunroom to watch the rain, and lightning if I’m lucky. The glass door that’s most often open— except that one time when one of us climbed through the window in the middle of the night to prove it could be done.

The garden. The grass. The red brick wall makes you feel like you’re in the real life secret garden. The roses that creep along the boiler house, and the purple wisteria that is more romantic than poetry. The cat, we named him Mango, but his real name is more dangerous, ill-suited for the orange blob that stares down clueless goldfish circling the pond. Lavender in the summer. Passion flowers, too. Cosmos dancing spindly and bright. Garden beds that are used to different hands folding over the soil each year.

From down here, you can look up to the second-floor and attic windows. Each frame is filled with life and movement. Someone sings. Someone is vacuuming, and the soft noise drones like a fly, lazy and unhurried. Someone is running up the Cinderella stairs now. Up there: bedrooms, a second kitchen, the boys’ bathroom, the girls’.

The bathroom (ours). Pink, orange, blue. A black and white dog on an orange canvas rests above the laundry shoot that you can (apparently) spit down all the way to the basement. We meet here some nights. Teeth brushing in warm light. Giggles when it’s late. Someone pees, another flosses. Intimacy that can’t exist anywhere else. (This is girlhood, by the way).

Then the boys’ bathroom, and I’m sorry to say, but I only felt the true weight of empathy after having to brush my teeth there for three consecutive nights. Freezing, draughty, perpetually damp. Bathmats flung in a crumpled heap. The faint smell of aftershave. A lock that clatters each night. Not much more to say here.

The upstairs kitchen is a boisterous retreat. Lunch time banter. Ships in the night and the afternoon.

My room is here. In the mornings, I smell coffee and onions. At night, I hear the washing machine tick. A room that was transformed from red carpet and bachelor brown… It’s white now, and warm, and the floorboards let noise bleed, but it’s nice to be reminded you’re not alone.

This room has watched me dance and doze and journal and pack and unpack. These walls leant an ear to complaints and worried groans. This bed held me and my sobs after heartbreak and late-night laughter. This door transmitted knocks and “dinner’s ready”. This sweet place was a sanctuary of my own. In my element: wood, dried flowers, whiskey bottle vases, and books.

There’s only one room left now. Barefoot down the stairs again. Pull a duvet up over the ears of the evening. Softly gather up nighttime essentials: a peppermint tea each, balls of wool, chocolate. The living room is something out of Little Women. Tall ceilings, a fireplace, a grand piano. French shutters and big windows that peer out onto the lawn. The mantlepiece decorated with last year’s pine cones. The Christmas tree next to the piano. We spent ages piecing it together. I still have a 30-minute video from a year ago of us putting it together in fits of laughter.

The red sofa will always be my favourite. It has the perfect depth:softness ratio. The blue sofa is now turquoise, but my memory will always be of socked feet and bodies supine on navy fabric. We meet here at night. On long nights when the light fades at four, we gather extra early and watch The Durrels, or Clarkson’s Farm. In the summers, we talk late into the night with doors flung open to the smell of sweet grass and dandelions. We’ve laughed here. Lazed here. Embraced. Mourned. Sung. Prayed.

If the kitchen is the heart, this room is the pulse. The rhythm of our days. Each one marked by the steady thud: mug down, lights dimmed, needles click, voices hush, movie murmurs. This room is a well we draw from every night. It’s lovely in morning light, but it somehow feels illegal to be there in the day. It’s like a secret only shared after the sun has set and all guards of the day are down.

So this is where I will leave you: curled up in your chosen seat, warm tangle of bodies, laughter pressed into cupped hands. Feet soon troop over carpeted floors to the four corners of the house. Lights are checked. Bathroom doors clatter. Toothbrushes buzz. Muffled voices on phones to friends. I’m gazing up from the garden, and it’s all golden and lovely, and soon curtains are flicked across windows and bedroom lights clicked off.

In a few months, maybe, I will pull the doorbell, which will resound throughout the house. Maybe one of you will come out of the backroom where we work sometimes. Maybe I will trundle up the stairs with heavy bags and unpack in a new room and shut a new door. Maybe we will meet in the kitchen at breakfast and ask each other how we slept, what we dreamt of. Maybe there will be new faces, new stories to learn.

Whether I have a day or a decade more of this, the memory will remain as sweet and untouchable as it is today. Here, I learnt to belong somewhere new. I learnt that home is expansion and belonging is vast. Place is always intermingled with people— they are indistinguishable, really.

So I bless this home, this deep, deep well. May new life continue to spring from it— flooding the tarmac roads and hedgerow lanes and river lapped banks. May it spread its eaves wide, lifting its skirts to run haphazardly through the streets. May it love generously, not holding back. May its roots run deep, offering nourishment to all who enter here.

With love,

Keziah x