india june
India June is an artist and writer living in Buffalo, New York. She works primarily with paper ephemera rooted in the practice of correspondence. Through her rigorous letter-writing, her envelopes and postcards have made their way to several dozen countries over the last seven years.
winged things, the end of june (july 2021)
fig. i — mixed media collage
> [“Crow Song” (1974)] I raised the banner // which decreed Hope // and which did not succeed // and which is not allowed. // Now I must confront the angel // who says Win, // who tells me to wave any banner // that you will follow
> [“Dream: Bluejay or Archeopteryx” (1969)] there was an outline, man // surfacing, his body sheathed // in feathers, his teeth // glinting like nails, fierce god // head crested with blue flame
> [from “Two-Headed Poems” (1978)] Birds // eat their words, we eat // each other’s words, hearts, // what’s // the difference?
{all by Margaret Atwood}fig. ii — mixed media collage
fig. ii — mixed media collage
> what am i?
> the side of your heart that is aching
> i can fill this void
> in this long life, it’s like i’m fading into ashes
> i’m exhausted by everything
> yet the resentment would confine me
> in my dreams, i’m drowsy again
{lyrics from Blue and Swimming Pool, some translated to english, all by Taeyong}fig. iv — scan (recoloured) from Birds of America (1917) - Thomas Gilbert Pearson, The University Society
recipients series i, envelopes 1-7
mixed media collage
(june 2021)
Everyone's stupid while they're alive (april 2017)
november.it was easy to ask for a solution. simple to plead in insinuations for an understanding, one single answer to the constantly projecting reel of questions i had.what happened?i am sitting across from you, the physical incarnation of my trust issues, and it is so easy to allow my gaze to drift to your left. the picture on the opposite wall greeting me in a way your cold, blank stare never would.this feels like a funeral.your chair screeches across floorboards and i might know that no one is watching me descend six feet below ground, and yet i feel every stranger looking intently as the blood seeps from my collar because i can't stop scratching at the skin that feels too tight.i want to be guillotined like charlotte corday.the rip in my tights which was snagged on the car door a week before is a gaping flesh wound. the quickness of my pulse is a heart attack. my eyelids are floodgates. my cheeks, a furnace. the acid in my throat, burning me from the inside out.i want to be burned at the stake like joan of arc.i was sure this would be fine. easy. the honesty was a rotting bandage you should have ripped off years before. i didn't matter. i just wish i hadn't cried. i wish i hadn't stood in the street and felt myself hanging by a thread.i want to be strung from the gallows like bridget bishop.it felt like a funeral.
january.the soft smell of grass hissed past me oncefor a split secondand i inhaled until i thought i wouldn't be able to ever breathe in again and it filled my lungs to the point of poppingsnappingleaving me just a ribcage with veins intertwined and blood without flowlike when you pricked my heart with a pin last spring to sew in all the things you hated about meyet all i smelledwas snowand concrete.
february.whathappenedtome?
march.this poem is called To Regret
and it is alternatively titled: I WILL CRUSH MY EMOTIONS INTO FLAT PANELS OF NOTHING LIKE A TRASH COMPACTERit is envy.
too much to let me breathe steadily.
i know this, and when i look to you it washes over me
thick, heavy, slow-moving —
molasses through my bleeding fingertips
eyes coaxed in corners
by the thin shield of sleep,
when i allow myself to drown
in lost memory.i regret this.
lineart (2016-2017)
september 2016
april 2017
may 2017
may 2018
may 2016
september 2017
journal flipthroughs
completed may 2017
completed april 2019
other writing
themed collage
analog collage mixed media postcards (september 2020)
photo, liquid sealant, plastic wrap, paint marker, acrylic (april 2020)
analog collage mixed media postcards (october 2018)
analog collage mixed media postcards (october 2020)
miscellaneous collage work
analog collage mixed media sent mail (2019-2020)
postcards to rachel i-iii
mixed media, summer 2021
recipients series ii, giving
envelopes and letters 1-7
mixed media, winter 2021
junk drawer i-iii
mixed media, february 2022
dryer lint
twitchy witchy girl
friends, curses, candy wrappers
i've been thinking about how i love
february 2022
I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT HOW I LOVE
I always imagine the writing of our wills will be done together even though it's going to make us both super depressedSTEP 1: prepare tools (melon-baller, chest cavity)⋆STEP 2: make room for you in meSTEP 3: keep safe (you, in marble form)⋆seam ripper may be required for repeat vulnerable people
I don't know that I glow in my room
but I shed my skin
— cells and myself —
and I breathe all my air
until I can't anymore
Loving too hard at nothing. What do I do now?
I want to eat the whole world, to feel my skin come to room temperature. I want to hold you flesh in mine.
They'll have to pry the thought, cold and dead, from my everloving hands.
pink stained with gooseberries
someday you’ll wake up
i’ll have the good butter (yellow)
that melts in the sun
waiting at the tableit’s hard to be us
but it’s harder to be other people
it’s hard to be us.
but you’ve seen other peopleit’s hard to be me, but i’d rather be comfortable than clean.
i'm not too good at scrubbing away
the things that make me
bear my teeth
i'm hoping someday to sleep them off, spit them out
i don't want them for you
wishing
on
eyelashes
pulled
by
the
fistful
A bushel, a peck
The fields have grown thistles.
Parting the grasses with shaking hands
Black crescent threads sticking to the dry-skin spiral of fingertipsHave I always been made of such sharp corners,
Of needles in rows,
Of spears and plumes of spines?I keep waking up with venus petals caked under my nails
Longer than they used to be
And I’m not sure the stain is mine, only that
Everybody loves you
But they don’t love you right.I taste acid when I wake at the idea
(I wanted so much more).What I do know
Is that if I were to love, I’d only love because, well, isn’t it horrible?
I’ve only wanted to be in your head, tooEmbedded thornily into your palmThe arch of your footThe teary seam of your eyesThe lining of your sleep.
the moon was so big when you were bornand i loved you both
an existence
drowned in blue light off the movie screeni twist off sections of red licorice stripsand hold them between teeth until they separatebreaking off into pieces like bits of eraserlike spitting up tonsil stoneslike nothing will just feelright
she is fifteen
We drive on mirror-sheened streets at night
Lakes forming where the concrete meets asphalt
And from the backseat my face learns the glow
Of bright yellow neon.My mother tells me about her first job
In Seattle, she is fifteen
She is reckless, she is frightened, she is
Cloaked in ripped tshirts and the embrace of loneliness.The streets there are longer
Shining in the same way, pinpricks of raindrops
Mist trailing off into the air of the highway,
I was there once, eight years ago
Too young for my first job but
Driving to the airport, I sit in the backseat
And my face learns the glow
Of bright yellow neon.
you
There is
a bloodstain on the coffee table
And it has been there long as I can remember
I forget
which time I bled that left a mark upon the wood,I.
You have sliced me
breastbone to waist
down the middle.
and reached in, with fingers splayed to
damage as many of my veins as any one person could
and the red ran down your arms
but I saw it in your eyes
and I felt like you were laughing.II.
You lingered in the doorway, like you were never sure and
I sat in the morning light, and I
could feel my fingertips, raw and rose-coloured
a prick of red at the nail where I had bitten too far and it stung
like getting soap in your eyes for the first time
and I looked to you and asked
“Was it something I did?”
and I realised that after all these years
you could never hear me.III.
You asked me once if I
was your blood sister
and we pricked our fingers but you never
touched the needle.
you watched as I took your knife and gutted myself
from the seat across yours
because I wanted you to be happy.And I forget
which time I bled that left a mark upon the wood,
But something in me never will.
la musique
1939 —
we make tea in plastic cups but really we know
just apple juice from waxy green cartons
from creaking white kitchen cabinets, metal latches, foamy liners.oil on canvas —
switching batteries between toys
faux silk slips, feather boas, clutches with beaded straps around
tiny wrists, pale and freckled, bitten nails.what matters most is not necessarily the reality —
singing abba gold songs into wooden spoons
we say goodnight to the moon
canopies and zoo animal watercolours
down the hallway, matching bedspreads,
matisse on the wall
a peeling poster we got from the art museum.
december 23, 2018
when we make bread we tuck loaves
between sheets, under layers of comforter
down
towels
wool
for they need time to grow
breathe
to be alive
and still
and alone
so they can be beautiful,
gold, and sturdy.when we make bread we tuck gently kneaded dough into pans
metal
touched by many hands
over many years;
we hide secrets
like bits of paper
specks of dust
into tiny folds
only we will remember
we left there for safekeeping,
an after-
or before-thought
to let them know
we considered their susceptibility
to environment
to time
to nurturing
and cushioned, lovingly,
their journey into the world.
marigolds i: for you
there are marigolds in the backyard
every year they gild the grass in petals
there are furs in the basement
hanging from the beams from sometime before
and there are teal jars on the counter
underneath the cabinets and reflected in the glass is the floral wallpaper which has been there from before i can remember
i am smaller, i am naive and i am skating across linoleum in white socks
keys by the closet, cats on the comforter, and plants with winding vines which grow past the shelves in jade leaves
we make cookies and watch murder mysteries, the kind that make you fall asleep
soft-spoken and lulling
like the wind that passes through the window at the kitchen sink when it rains
marigolds ii: for me
the soccer-mom silver car pulls across the charcoal asphalt and into our parking space
where the small metal sign says number two thirty
the hill in front of us which leads up to the train tracks is illuminated with the headlights
and in the yellow beams there are rabbits
soft brown coats aglow
which rustle in the grasses and make their way up into the brush so they can hide
from the light they didn't ask for
there are marigolds in my grandmother's backyard
every year and they gild the grass in petals
and i have bought some from the farm stand for myself
so they can wither in the light of my living room windows and remind me of the rain which fell five years ago
speckling the wallpaper at the kitchen sink
as i looked outside and watched the flowers grow under the grey sky
five years ago we planted marigolds as we always have
looking to her i ask why we would want to keep the rabbits away
and sometimes, the things that seem like good omens are things that we want to leave us.
august 7, 2019
from here the clouds below look like
ice caps skating along the thin water
an opaque and baby blue chill
as above, so below
august 16, 2019
i saw a forest green house yesterdaywhile driving through a suburb by the other suburbs i’ve been staying in and hatingbut not the one i live inand i thought about what it would be like if it smelled like cardamom pods all the timeyour jacket tucked by a couch cushion in the living room and us taking up spacedrifting in and out of consciousness near one anotherand i wanted to bite down on the feelings of home i haven’t felt in a year and maybe i’ll never feel againbut i don’t remember where i was or the street name and we took a leftand now you and your jacket and the smell of cardamom are gone for good
october 21, 2019
I watched steam run through my coat
Straighten the lines that aged there
And I laid my familiar garment down onto the ottoman,
Smoothed it once more with my palm
And thought of the word supple for the first time in how long,
I don’t know.
How long has it been between now
And when you held my hand,
Fist to grip finger
The skin smooth, real,
A compliant softness that radiated heat?
Does the feeling reverberate still,
Of apples dropped between your outstretched extremities
Willing to catch the fruit we laboured over,
One October in the orchard,
One July in the field?
Did you watch the solemn hit
Of discarded cores onto the ground at the tree roots?
Ten years ago I learned the word detritus at the preserve
As herons fluttered by
The noise of cicadas trapped in my head
My hands gripping onto weathered ropes
Tying me down to the bridge, above the wheat
And water.
How long has it been
Since a touch guided me
Across asphalt, between the rush of traffic?
I don’t know if I have remembered to look both ways
But maybe next time the light will change, and I will wait
november 4, 2019
Ritter sport bars are my mom’s favourite.
Or maybe not.
I do not know where they rank in her subconscious, running list of candy products
but I was in line today
and I looked over to the impulse buys
to see that the Ritter sport bars were overpriced
but I bought one anyway,
because I like hazelnuts.I opened it hours later and
after eating a square too many I realised
it smelled like Ikea to me,
which is also a corporate entity
with shiny floors and furniture bits
wrapped in sealed plastic.
but I always liked Ikea when I was younger,
and I am wondering if you would
like Ritter sport bars,
patterned magazine holders,
kitchen towels,
a snug corner in my memories.
april 1, 2020
we are at a four-way-stopi used to only sit
back seat, right side of the car
when we would sing about bucket seats
but i would wear my seat beltcrumpled pages of colouring books tucked into the netted mesh pockets
and knees poking out from secondhand nightgowns
that looked like clothes that princesses wore in moviesi used to only get twist cones
rainbow sprinkles
a bottle of water with the condensation clouding up
on the counters that reflected pink neon lightsbut now i am in the passenger seat
cherry dip running down the side of the paper wrapping
somewhere along main street
at a four-way-stop
may 21, 2018
i feel like nothing tonighti knew the names of my neighbours too long ago and we shoveled sidewalks together in quiet mornings when the sun glowed yellow-orange over the tops of housesbecause all i remember is dirty snowi sat one year ago in the amphitheater and among orange glow one moth hovered onstage and settled into a spotlight on white linoleum as if it was unsure how to get back to the beginningmaybe i was the only one who sawi sat one winter ago in my grandmother’s dining room and through orange colored cups of soda the fading smell of my aunt’s floral perfume or dollar-store shampoo settles among plastic-cased pumpkin piei existed tonight, among dirty snow, moths eating me apart piece by piece until i was nothing but orange light.
o'hare has windows
there's a feeling that i used to think came from driving to canada with my family
we always lived at the water, and i remember still how the morning felt at the train station
so long ago that i still forget which year
but i feel it, too, when the sun reminds me of the learning centre a few towns away
i don't think i could read yet and my father would reset the games and displays when i wasn't looking and i thought things were magic
or i thought there were inner workings i could never see
it took me until i was 19 to realise our first cat wasn't given to a family friend to live on a farm
but i grew up picking tomatoes on my knees, and i never questioned my mother
i only saw a ragdoll cat running through the same field that i had,
with the same sun on her face
and i saw the sun again when i flew to chicago, alone, and i had never seen the midwest
and you didn't live on the water, but o'hare has windows, floor to ceiling
and i breathed in and knew you in the sun
22
some days someone will pass me by
leaving a trail of sunscreen scent in their wake
that clings around me in the way dandelion fluff
floats in the wind until it finds a place to settle
in its own little congregation, ready for the next life
dormant until green bearings grip the earth
and i remember that i will know you in any lifetime
freckled summer fruit that hugs shoulders
under a rust and blush sky, rising after we wake
dystychiphobia
it is 92 degrees outside, it is about to rain, i can hear the thunder. it is cancer season, i am exhausted, i am well, i am alone and i have myself. my horoscope says i will suffer and i will serve. it says i desire death by hunger rather than restraint, and another says divine providence alone can kill me. i am so mortal i have chest pains that knock the wind from my lungs and i am unkillable. my father always said he would die early but maybe i will be passed from one lifetime to another until the earth is in flames. maybe he will wash away with the rain. there is a flash flood warning, there are bolts of lightning which sever trees, the lights in my living room flicker out, there is sweat trailing down my spine.
digging in
”friend” is so tender
i’m yours, i’m yours
all i wanted to beif i am the curse we never speak of
please don’t tell the strangers
i’m theirs, and i’m noti haven’t been my own in yearsand now i wish i had a sandwich board sign
of everything i’ve ever feared and kept to myself
(my own unspeakable vow)
(sealed in fabric stitched together)
(and buried, crust to mantle-deep)
to instead show the world plainly
perhaps that would be easierforgiveness, forgiveness
hynes center
today i ate the greenest pesto
it looked like water thick with algae
on a piece of bread my mother gave me
she walked into the living room and smiledtoday it started snowing on the brand new spring-green leaves that bloomed
yesterday
i love cherry blossoms and honeysuckles, all trees with spindly branches that shed
floppy flower petals all over the road
and she said she thought it was in madame butterfly
that someone dies and snow covers the cherry blossom trees
she always loved the operatoday i took an escalator past walls of dark forest marble
to a cement room where a soldier stuck a needle in my arm
and we were lined up in rows so far apart like plots on soil which would have felt more like home than here and i watched the clock tick down
and i remembered when i used to look at a real clock every day
and count down in tally marks on a notebook each minute until they were gone
and i could float across the sidewalk home
june 20, 2021
i will be thinking for so long about whether i burn or freeze, whether i need the answers or fear them. everything and all at once. inside of me is dressed poorly for a walk in winter and arrives to the step sweating and with numb hands. i want to be comfortable and to close my eyes and to be held and maybe that will never happen for me
i am scared of emergency calls
i miss winter. i miss the ice in my hands, the kind that burns.
i never touched the soft pink insulation that trapped the cold out of my childhood bedroom when the seasons changed
but i would stare at it through the glass windows and long to know what it felt like.
i was told no, that between the cotton candy there are shards of glass
and i wonder if sticking my fingers between the tufts and coming up covered in barbs of pickled ginger
would feel like shoving my palms into snowbanks on the walk homei miss winter. and we stood by the sculpture of women and geese, textured metal that holds in the sun’s heat
and i looked out into the traffic circle
for once, maybe only since i was given these mind-numbing flashbacks that keep me stranded in place
i could see was the night i was fifteen, walking home in the snow alone and the sky had never been such a gleaming pink above the dark trees
and i hated him.
i had wished one of the passing cars making its looping turn would skid by and hit me
that i would lay on the freezing asphalt, ribs busted open, for the EMTs to try to stuff my guts back in
only to say they tried their best,
my limp body and spilled intestines riding alone in the ambulance after all
junk drawer: debut exhibition
july 2022
Junk Drawer is about the accidental collection of things we never intended to keep. It artfully assembles random items and memories that linger in our spaces and in our minds, though we rarely consciously affirm their existence. It’s about the home as a presence and a person, filled with everything we never meant to hold onto.
Receipt Tapegrocery store receipt, pen, acrylic paint, varnish, rubber cement, thumbtack, sticky tack, superglue, Home Depot Outdoor Grizzly Grass in Fern, and cardboard on paper.+ Furniture listings from Antique Wicker From the Heywood-Wakefield Catalog: A Schiffer Book for Collectors (1994)Written text (original):
DONT FORGE TMILK
BREAD
I LOVE THE GROCERY STORE
OH NO I AM OVERWHELMED IN THE CEREAL AISLE AGAIN
Knife at Rest on the Kitchen Tablefruit decorating knife, silica gel and its packets, bread tags, thumbtacks, dead bumblebee from the collection of the artist, candle wax, fortune cookie fortunes, dollhouse accoutrements and ceramic figurines, gingham fabric, Marukawa peach chewing gum wrapper, MIRRO Cooky Press instruction booklet (ca. 1940s), Trader Joe’s meyer lemon & cream yogurt lid, polaroid photo of trees in Massachusetts, mod podge, alcohol ink, acrylic ink, acrylic paint, liquid chalk, gesso, varnish, rubber cement, scotch tape, masking tape, super glue, and pen on wood.+ Jeanne Dunning’s “Leaking” (1994)
+ Nan Goldin’s “Gina at Bruce’s Dinner Party” (1991)
+ Edward Hopper’s “Eleven A.M.” (1926)Wikihow article [How to Peel and Core Apples]: “Remove the core by pulling the apple core out.”Written text (original):
please take this orange
i have peeled for you
i peeled it for you i have
thought of you i will
think of you
always
General Care For Popcorn Ceilings and Wood-Glued Furnituredried baby’s breath, metal washers from the childhood swingset of the artist, Babybel Cheese bag netting, keys, rubber bands, embroidery thread, Culture Hustle Black 1.0 pigment, acrylic paint, acrylic paint, gel pen, adhesive, and superglue on paper.+ Furniture listings from Antique Wicker From the Heywood-Wakefield Catalog: A Schiffer Book for Collectors (1994)
+ Illustrations from The Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature (ed. Margaret E. Martignoni (1955)
Checking the Mailbox or: Dream Fallen Under the Bedsalvia splendens, celosia plumosa, and amaranthus caudatus seeds and their envelopes, mod podge, india ink, alcohol ink, acrylic paint, gesso, pen, scotch tape, rubber cement, glue, block printing ink, and varnish on wood.+ Sassetta’s “Madonna and Child with Angels” (ca. 1445-50)
+ Sassetta’s “The Last Supper” (1423)
+ Giovanni di Paola’s “St. Catherine’s Exchanging Her Heart With Christ” (1460)
+ Edwin G Conklin’s (University of Pennsylvania) Karyokinesis and Cytokinesis in the Maturation, Fertilization and Cleavage of Crepidula and Other Gastropoda Cell Diagrams (1902)
The First Place You Look (A Needle in the Royal Dansk Tin)Verbatim blank CD, dollhouse teddy bear, dollhouse light wiring and plugs, other dollhouse accoutrements, glow-in-the-dark star, key, vintage and current postage stamps and post markings, dust bunny (dryer lint, silica gel, adhesive), silica gel packet, plastic sheet, parking ramp pass, clothespins, Micro-Pak LDPE Recyclable sticker (from shoebox), TrueValue receipt, chenille needle, bread tags, matches, acrylic paint, acetone, alcohol ink, printing ink, felt-tip and gel pen, marker, sealant, superglue, rubber cement, scotch tape, and mod podge on wood.+ “Stain Removal From Fabrics: home methods” Good Reading Rack Service pamphlet (1948)
+ Beatrix Potter illustration (from The Tale of Peter Rabbit)
+ Briarpatch I SPY memory game cardoriginal poem:i’ve told you i’m full of poly-fil
i looked down (glass eyes hanging from threads i should replace) to realise i was missing stuffing (though i’m not sure where or when i lost it, and i imagine synthetic clouds trailing behind the car like just-married tin cans, swept up by the wind and into the trenches of dirt next to the road) and i reached my arm far into the back of the hall closet where the sewing basket might be
blindly feeling for the plastic bag between the shadowsto try to fix myself againhave you ever thought about roosevelt pardoning that black bear when his men had tied it up for the shooting
but he was on a bear hunt in the first place
and the bear wasn’t armed for a fair fight in the first place?
it was men tying up bears in the first place, and it always is
Freezer Jampaper berry basket, vintage stamps, dollhouse accoutrements, bread bag tie, thumbtacks, milk bottle seals, Home Depot Outdoor Grizzly Grass in Fern, curling ribbon, embroidery thread, spray paint, varnish, acrylic paint, mod podge, oil pastel, and adhesive on wood.
The Attic (I Am Not Scared of Ghosts)dollhouse candles and ceramic figurines, Strombecker Playthings Genuine Walnut Cabinet Radio, Arcor strawberry candy wrapper, vintage stamps, Airspeed inflatable packaging, AIRplus inflatable packaging, Macmillan Publishing Services invoice, carton contents shipping label, candle wax, dried baby’s breath flowers, gel pen, marker, superglue, rubber cement, mod podge, varnish, gesso, acrylic paint, embroidery thread, scotch tape, and curling ribbon on wood.+ X-Acto House of Miniatures No. 40015 Chippendale Sofa fabric, patterns, and instruction booklet (ca. 1980s)
+ Furniture listings from Antique Wicker From the Heywood-Wakefield Catalog: A Schiffer Book for Collectors (1994)
+ Wassily Kandinsky’s “Sky Blue” (ca. 1940)Written text (original):(I Am Just Too Scared to Look Her in the Eyes)ARE YOU THERE? IT’S MEself-imposed haunting
Pulling Stringspaper bobbin, embroidery thread, gel pen, acrylic paint, alcohol ink, rubber cement, and invoice sticker on paper.
+ Furniture listing from Antique Wicker From the Heywood-Wakefield Catalog: A Schiffer Book for Collectors (1994)
Alternative Methodsbread tags, gel pen, acrylic paint, alcohol ink, rubber cement, and superglue on paper.
I Would Tell Your Fortune but It's Getting LateBriarpatch I SPY memory game cards, Bicycle playing card deck, Avery Removable Color Coding Labels sheet, Macmillan Publishing Services invoice, fortune cookie fortune, acrylic paint, gel pen, varnish, rubber cement, and superglue.card backs read:
1. Be cautious — no — Take the risk. Sorry. Fuzzy signal.
2. More than eight in 10 Americans — 87 percent — have magnets on their refrigerator, according to a recent CBS news poll, including more than half who keep five or more magnets on their fridge.
3. Count your dustbunnies — they’re lonely!
4. Contact your doctor or healthcare provider if you begin to experience headaches, nausea, or the permeating scent of superglue.
5. Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes she calls me Cassandra. I don’t think I’m a prophet, I only see but they never believe me. So what’s the difference?
6. Your pocket has a hole in it. Figure out what you’ve lost.
7. The basement, the junk drawer, basement, cabinet, closet, junk drawer, you’ve shut it on your fingers, screws to something. You don’t remember what it is anymore.
8. You may need to clean out your wallet. You may need to clean out your glove compartment. You may need to forget about your junk drawer.
9. I have dropped you behind the couch.
A. Feel around blindly
B. Get out the vacuum
C. Forget you’re there
?
10. Wait, I need to take a picture of this home before I leave it.