Prose #2 [Bookcase Trilogy]

 Ah. I suppose I must unpack and disconnect each of these facets, too. 

I did not realize that. 

One day when I was gone, the world continued on without me. To you, nothing of me has been changed; I remain the same woman I was ten years ago. But to me, everything has been warped with time. 

I will never forget rainy nights and the warmth of the scuffed wood floors in your home. The way your father spoke as if each letter were more important than the last; you enunciate that way when you get angry or upset or very focused on something you believe in. The way your mother was quiet and cold; you mumble when you speak sometimes and you push everyone away at random and we worry about you. Or, I worry about you. 

I have to unpack and dissect things down to the log cabin fort in your front yard when we were seven and eight; you had that impish look on your face like you were better than me because YOUR mother didn’t tell you that you’d break your leg up there. The fact you never got your tetanus shots. The texture and feeling of the toys in the upstairs hallway; the little games your sisters would play with me to entertain me when I was bored. We’d dress up dolls and make pages upon pages of dot-pen masterpieces, and then your mother would call up through the grate that dinner was ready. 

The way each face looked in the photobooks that would be dwelled upon for hours; the way my eyes always drew themselves directly to yours on the page. The fuzzy images no longer hold any place in my mind, but I can still remember the sound of the train coming at four a.m. and your dog’s shrill barking through the night. I can still remember the taste of forbidden ice cream and special raspberries and grape nuts cereal. The rain filled up the giant puddles in your front yard. 

I like memory foam pillows because that was what your sister used. I like fresh bell peppers because that was what your mother gave us to eat. I like patchouli because to me, it smells like your house.

I miss washing dishes with you and your sister. I miss you coming inside from mowing the lawn, and I also, reluctantly, miss the secret thrill of watching you mow the lawn from her window. I miss the sound of your mother practicing piano before Sundays, and the obnoxious Christmas tree lights that made your whole living room look like a weird disco. I miss your dog and his dog-smell, and I miss how your oldest sister used to be the coolest person I knew. I miss the first copy of National Velvet that she gave me. The cover fell off. 

I miss waking up one morning and finding it was just you and I and your father upstairs in his room (so basically not even there), and not knowing what I should do so just standing in the kitchen peering into your bedroom like a terrified cat. And then I went in and woke you up and sat in your chair in my blue and yellow striped pajama pants while you blinked sleep from your eyes, and we decided to make breakfast. I think we made pancakes. I don’t remember. 

I don’t miss her. I don’t miss the way she made drawings just for you and casually gave them to you. I don't miss that you taped them to your door. I don’t miss the fact she found it very easy to walk into your room and never seemed like a terrified cat whatsoever. 

I don’t miss the dances. The yellow dresses and black pants and uncomfortable haircuts and the acne on our faces. I don’t miss the way everyone else came storming into my little world and suddenly, there was a duplicity to all of us, and we were double-agents in a civil war. 

I don’t miss that summer. The one when I decided to stop writing stupid poems and listening to Kathleen Edwards and let you glimpse the universe of lemon verbena-scented memories begging me to cling to the past, cling to you, cling to the known and the comfortable. I cut off the parts of me that were clinging because I see all of myself as weakness. I see the fact that you are inextricably a part of me as a weakness. 

But we did make breakfast together. 

And I still have your kitchen layout memorized.

Ask me where the silverware is.

You’re not interested? Sure.

I’m not interested? Lies. 

I am in fact completely interested in time travel. I would be very willing to jump into the next car nicknamed The TARDIS and let it drive me off of a bridge if it promised a return to photo albums and maple syrup festivals and the time I choked on an icecube in the church bathroom. 

But I am grown up now, and there are no more of any of these things. 

And I cannot promise to provide these things for anyone. 

And you cannot promise anything at all. 

So I will miss and not miss, compare and not compare, cry without tears on rainy evenings and June nights, and somehow come out of it all alive because I still have you. 

My one intact memory.