eleven 11

you can get sturdy to The Smiths

i won't elaborate

“Ew” I said, spraying the silver fish crawling up the wall in the hallway before gathering it up with a tissue. 

“Do you think I have an infestation? This is the second one I’ve seen this week” I asked my sister as she folded my dad’s button-ups to be donated. I knew that it’s been raining, and hot, and humid. I knew why it was inside but I asked her anyway. 

“Do you find them in large circles everywhere? Are they crawling all over you right now?” She asked me. 

“No”

“Then, no. You’re probably fine” 

We sorted through clothing found in closets and drawers. Some things were to be donated, and some had petrified elastic waistbands. Some things weren’t recognizable to this century.

We talked about what we would have her boyfriend’s family do when they came to help us clean up the house. Maybe the basement? Maybe Joel could paint? I didn’t pick paint colors yet, nix the painting idea. We talked about what to do with the cars before deducing that it might be better off if those annoying kids on the commercial got them. 

We sorted through the compression socks I gave you that you only wore a handful of times, the sneakers I bought you for your birthday that you didn’t get to wear, the medical equipment, the religious statues, the ties. 

I noticed a crack on your wall, and I panicked a little bit, but it was humid in there. I can’t keep the door open yet, even though I know I should. 

“One more year couldn’t hurt, right?” I asked nobody in particular. “At least until I figure it out”. Figure what out? 

I sat myself between the bed frame and the dresser, in the space I used to curse while trying to drag the vaccum through once a week. “Why is everything so big and curvy?!” I would curse, running over the top of my foot with the vaccum. 

I took everything out. Some of it was clothing that spilled out from adjacent drawers, some of it was manuals for things I don’t think we had anymore. There was a plastic bag of one-dollar-bills and a VHS tape, your bag of collectable coims, and another box. 

In this box was jewlery, some gold, some silver. Some religious pendants, a turquoise ring and something Egyptian. And there were folded notes. I opened them, because he wasn’t here to stop me. I read them, because he wasn’t here to stop me. There was a note in unknown handwriting with a snippet of something that must have meant a lot to you. And there were two folded pieces of paper, not quite yet yellowed. 

One pamphlet of apples in the orchard we went to together, just him and I. 

One ticket for the final Harry Potter movie we went to together, just him and I. 

My sister and I took the bags to the car where she could drop off the clothes for donations, and I managed to get all of the garbage bags to fit into my overworked garbage can. She left, I went inside. 

My phone lit up, it was my neighbor. [We were looking through this big box of old pictures and we found these!]. The first picture was of my neighbor’s son and I in our soccer uniforms, shorts hiked up to our armpits. The second was of four of us locked in the gated pen my dad built for our dog, Brownie.

I stared at myself in the picture for a long time. I haven’t always been like this; afraid of seeing two silver fish inside or the ceiling collapsing on my head. Maybe if I can remember what it felt like to be in this house before, to live that life, I can keep moving forward.

when it inevitably happens to you, I hope you find someone who also knows what it feels like because it’s indescribably isolating without

17 year old me would beat 29 year old me to a pulp if she could