Empty House Press

Today I'm sitting on the sofa Unwashed, undressed but This is something, more something than lying in The dark watching a TV show on my phone that Makes me weep with homesickness and loss. Which is what I did yesterday.

We sat at our kitchen table with the stained blue tablecloth we thought would class up our empty apartment. The light from our trash-picked lamp cast shadows across your face and you looked like a dusty blue-eyed painting. Our table sat next to a window in the living room with the Venetian blinds torn off, and you were a part of the atmosphere. During that endless summer, there was no salt in the house, so I flavored our meals with the rust from the bumper of your old Buick LeSabre. We had made a promise that no matter how drunk we got, we’d never get dinner from 7-11 on 40th and Walnut again. Two weeks later, we broke the promise and giggled like little kids going against the adult us-es as we swayingly pointed out what we wanted to eat, little foam mustaches of Porter on our faces. Twin conspirators, we picked out some extra bags of Lay’s potato chips—salt and vinegar and sour cream and onion—and laughed the entirety of the two blocks home. Your face was covered in blonde crumbs.

I give up memories in exchange for others: I ask my parents what they want to remember - maybe a particular day or what color our old couch was (the day we brought home snow / brown with orange poppies) and I give them what I know for what they have. I want to know what color my first bedroom was, how my sister and I looked when we were playing in the backyard, what my grandfather's voice sounded like inside the expanse of the kitchen, and if I ever swung from the weeping willow vines - I only remember them snapping in my hand, no matter how I twisted them together.

I have a habit of telling people that I live outside of town, a proximity made up of miles and space unattended. A doll's head caught up on a tree branch marks the halfway line, counting cars. Sometimes I act like the town itself isn't both a launching and end point on a map. This is how I detach myself, even when my bones know the streets. Or how I separate home from the articles I search for, or the girl who died in the same park I threw picnics in.