Upon Losing a Childhood Home

My mother swore
for the twenty-three years we lived there
that the house was grey when, clearly,
it was white.
White with black shutters and
one-two-three on the mailbox
and the old camper in the driveway
all year round.
When I was a girl I walked
down the side of the house,
the grass tickling my toes,
jumping over the rainstorm like
I was traversing a rocky river.
I passed the gardenias growing
up the lattice and the
bed of strawberries my mother
tended to, as she did all things, lovingly,
hands dirty, sweating in the sun.
I stayed awake in my little bedroom
With the slanted closet floor, looking
Out the window. I pretended the two
street lamps were two moons
in an alien sky.
I walked down the hill from high school
And nearly ran into the sanctuary of
its unchanging walls.
The four of us piled onto my parent’s
queen bed, my father pretended to be annoyed.
My mother scratched our backs and
Plucked our eyebrows and passed
on little wisdoms. We looked out onto our deck
peppered with potted plants and
the double seated swing I fell in love on.
I lived in every room in that house
And I watched it until the very last second
in the rearview mirror as
we drove behind the u-haul
And the hill swallowed it up for the last time.
It sold nine months later
And I mourned in another state,
thinking of someone else in my
cradle of love and woe and
adventure and imaginary worlds,
in my bedroom pretending other things,
in my backyard making other adventures,
owning something that I thought
would always be mine.
more by NOELLE CURRIE

Photograph by Sasha Freemind