Between 1997 and 2025, poet Enid Osborn lived in a 2-story Italianate Victorian boarding house built c. 1902 in Westside Santa Barbara, California, in a cul-de-sac abutting the railroad and freeway. Blending autobiography, magic realism and fiction, Osborn paints a picture of a charmed-if-spartan life. Poems focus mainly on the early years of her tenancy, when the house stood amid a crumbling neighborhood in gang territory--an area which gentrified in later years. Subthemes include trains, insomnia, ghosts, rats, birds, colorful neighbors, surviving cancer, and living long enough in one place to play a bit role in its metamorphosis.
