The woman who greeted me at the door had my mother’s mug in her hand and my name on her lips, like she’d rehearsed it in the mirror. I knew she had. She was so, so glad I had come.
The house knew me, but felt ashamed. It remembered the sound of my bare feet in the hallway, the way my mother’s voice rose and fell from the kitchen. But now the windows were cloudy, the houseplants drooped yellow and forgotten on the sill. They looked like they were trying to die quietly. The house felt bruised.
We had already taken the important things—though not on our timeline. It was a rushed job we referred to as Operation Heirloom.
The house breathed wrong. I think it missed being lived in with care. It missed being known. It felt misplaced, like both of us were trying to recognize one another in the absence of the person who stitched us together.
The discomfort pushed me outside, a slick summer snake.
It was April, and my mother’s many flowers were growing well out of spite. The irises grew tall and sharp, nearly cutting the air. Their blue faces turned toward me. I hadn’t come for the irises. I hadn’t even thought of them until I stepped out back and saw them there. And I—I felt it in my sternum, that thud of knowing. Like my mother had whispered straight into the marrow: Take them.
They weren’t just flowers. They were proof. They were decades old, having survived winter after winter. And suddenly, I wanted them more than I wanted anything.
I didn’t ask permission. I found a shovel and I dug like a daughter possessed. Not neat, not gentle. This wasn’t theft—it was reclamation.
They loosened easily, like the earth was helping. I pulled them up, each bulb a small and furious heart. Inside, I heard the woman talking over dinner—laughing into a dead woman’s dishes. I cradled the irises in bags, tucking them in for the drive to a new home.
My father watched me take the irises. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t help, either. That’s the thing about oil and water—you can stir them all you want, but they won’t hold together. They’ll shimmer for a while, then separate clean.
I thought I heard the house shift, deciding whether to let me go. It was so good to me.
The house is no longer mine.
But the irises are.
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Amanda Ashworth is an English teacher and writer raised in rural Tennessee. She keeps one foot in the classroom and the other in the creek. Rooted in Appalachian tradition and storytelling, her work explores memory, lineage, and Southern womanhood.
© 2025, Amanda Ashworth
Halfway Down the Stairs 