Used To Be Home

Vivid blue seeps down towards the trees, fading slightly before meeting their leafy, upturned heads. The pond extends, glassy and dark, before me. Ducks with shimmering green feathers disrupt the waters. They ruffle their feathers, adding soft sounds to the crisp air.

Trees rim the pond and follow the path. Their rusted leaves rustle and sigh in a breeze that chills my nose. I soak in the rich reds and burnt oranges. One tree looks toasted, with golden leaves tinged dark at the outermost edges. The stream trickling out of the pond’s surface is clogged with drifting mats of multicolored foliage.

I shove my chilly hands in the pockets of my borrowed coat. I underestimated how cold it would be, but this chill is welcome after months of fickle, humid weather. A group of kids shouts indistinctly, and a football wobbles through the air on the pond’s opposite shore. A boy reaches for it, loses his balance, and tumbles to the verdant grass as the ball hits with a muffled whump. 

It feels odd, being back in a place that used to be my home. I meander down the asphalt path. My hands burrow deeper into my pockets. Afterimages flicker down the path in front of me. A tiny blond girl on a purple-streamered bicycle dodges goose droppings and whizzes down the hill with screams of exhilaration, faded with the past years.

I am no longer that girl. For better or for worse, I am new now. My eyes trace her ghostly progress until the memory fades. I have met, and lost, friends. I have been thrust into a new world and claimed it as my own. I have come out different. Knowing more. Knowing less.

I wander past the group tossing their football, past the worn swing set. It looks the same, but I have never met the children now playing there. I tried to leap over that stream once, the one now choked with the skeletons of past seasons. My legs were too short, and I fell in the running water and bruised my knees.

I pass up the street, minding that one spot where the pavement juts up. They still haven’t fixed it. I used to swerve around that bump when I raced my friends on my little purple bike. My eyes are drawn to the two-story house, painted brown and white. Ivy coats one side of it. For some reason, no for-sale sign stands in the too-long grass. The wooden swing in the back is slightly droopy. Its ropes extend up into the upper boughs of the hickory, now blushing a vibrant scarlet. The tree house, the patio, the porch. I stare up at my window. Nothing. Only a murky darkness.

It looks well-kept, almost as if we had never left. No holes in the screens or windows, no peeled patches of paint, no frayed ropes in the treehouse railing. My memory strings a hammock in the trees, sparks the embers of a fire, and scatters lights into the rich sky. I used to lie in that hammock, tracing constellations and wondering. Am I different? Will I change? Will I know myself?

Am I content?

I smile as I drive away. The house recedes in the rear window. Everything changes, but many questions remain. Maybe there’s some comfort to be found in that.