Standing Outside the Anne Frank House The line is long, so long it bends at the corner like starlight in a telescope, wrapping around the block. Committed but restless, we bend knees, shift weight from foot to foot. People talk in little clusters of acquaintance. This is not a place where a stranger would think to turn and say something to a stranger. A few clusters leave. All of a sudden they decided they would rather be somewhere that isn’t here, and that’s where they go. The line lurches forward. Somewhere in the museum they have built to house it is the house itself. I love it already, its bricks, its boards, its nails, the very forests and mountains the materials that compose it came from. It is still doing what it has always done: take people in. A cold wind blows down the Prinsegracht canal. People unzip their bags, pull coats out by the sleeve. The couple in front of me leave. I watch them turn to one another and agree. It isn’t worth the wait, their eyes seem to say. They’ll find a café, come some other time. I stay. I shuffle forward with the others, thinking of all the lines we form on earth and what for.
Standing Outside the Anne Frank House
Standing Outside the Anne Frank House
Standing Outside the Anne Frank House
Standing Outside the Anne Frank House The line is long, so long it bends at the corner like starlight in a telescope, wrapping around the block. Committed but restless, we bend knees, shift weight from foot to foot. People talk in little clusters of acquaintance. This is not a place where a stranger would think to turn and say something to a stranger. A few clusters leave. All of a sudden they decided they would rather be somewhere that isn’t here, and that’s where they go. The line lurches forward. Somewhere in the museum they have built to house it is the house itself. I love it already, its bricks, its boards, its nails, the very forests and mountains the materials that compose it came from. It is still doing what it has always done: take people in. A cold wind blows down the Prinsegracht canal. People unzip their bags, pull coats out by the sleeve. The couple in front of me leave. I watch them turn to one another and agree. It isn’t worth the wait, their eyes seem to say. They’ll find a café, come some other time. I stay. I shuffle forward with the others, thinking of all the lines we form on earth and what for.