Never did I think that I think I would pay so much attention to front porches, but here I am. Without intention, I find myself scrutinizing every house I drive past with a porch attached. Does it wrap around the whole house? Is it screened-in? How big is it? What's the railing situation? Stairs?

My house had a front porch until it didn't; it was more like a platform than a porch, as it was never intended to be permanent. It had a few steps off the sides, no railings. It served me well, but after a decade or so, it started to fail. Last fall, it began to pull away from the house and took some of the siding off with it. We replaced it with a much smaller porch, more like a landing pad for the stairs leading in and out of the front door. Although I never really loved the original porch that was on my house, I do miss having a dedicated outdoor space like that, and I often think about adding a screened-in porch in its place.

I can suffer from decision fatigue; when I'm faced with endless possibilities, I become completely overwhelmed and tend to avoid making a decision at all. However, I am working on narrowing down my hypothetical-new-porch options, and it feels like I'm starting to come out of my standstill on making a choice as to how to proceed. I'm not quite there yet, though, so I will continue on my New England Tour of Front Porches in the meantime. If you see a person driving by your house very slowly, staring at your porch, it's probably me, and I promise it's for research purposes.

Paige O. Roberts has a degree in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Henniker Review, Sidereal Magazine, Rejection Letters, and Cypress. She has been nominated for a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize. She lives in northern New Hampshire, where she owns and operates a pet boutique called Tailswag.