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The sun pouring through the slats in the roof had evaporated the water that only two days before had formed puddles between hills of soot. Walls still smelled like smoke and wires, but it was a dry smell. Almost a new house smell. What used to be concealed by drywall and popcorn ceiling was now nakedly visible. Above me in the family room I saw where the fire had blackened the last section of roof before tapering off. In the kitchen a coil of burnt wire dangled from above and I assumed, no doubt incorrectly, it was somehow connected to the doorbell chime box clinging to the peeled paint. Alone, I stood behind the bar where I used to have conversations with my father as he read at the kitchen table. My memories of that room are related to the position of everything in stasis--his hand towel hanging from the oven handle, his barren and flat and polished counter top, the cleared space where his circular table used to be, the open pantry revealing his unhealthy diet of carbohydrates. My memories of the home itself are related to the structure of the place--the walls that separated us and enclosed us, my vantage from the living room couch when midday light would peek through the sliding glass door and illuminate the dining room chair where my cat slept and his fur collected, my father in the kitchen, worn and helpless as the years passed, the corner of the family room where my brother once playfully threw and accidentally injured my sister's Pomeranian, the dark hallway at night that almost made me believe in ghosts. Ghosts also hide in the light in plain sight. In the dining room after the chaos of the fire had died down and predatory contractors stopped trying to extort money from my father hours after the news had live broadcast the destruction, I only noticed that the firefighters had covered mom's curio cabinet in a black plastic veil after I retreated to my bedroom to see that my own belongings were unharmed. The living room was where I spent most of my time. I wasted my youth not outside, but in that room, tapping the buttons of game controllers and failing to apprehend the depression it no doubt indicated. Somehow it was never the items in those rooms that I feared losing, but the rooms themselves--enclosures where I once felt safe enough to retreat when all else felt hopeless. "Our house," Gaston Bachelard once wrote, "is our corner of the world . . . it is our first universe." From my perspective sitting in the many recliners my father replaced in that room over the years to fend off the stench of our cats' scent markings, I looked from the kitchen to the television and back again, taking in my universe. Too many cords used to huddle together from a single outlet and a multi-pronged power strip. Instead of using zip ties to consolidate everything I let…