Broke into the old apartment, this is where we used to live…

I find it ironic that, though the house itself was on the market for a remarkable amount of months, it took only a mere hour to dismantle the sign that granted one to purchase years of memories. I recall standing out in the first snowfall of the year, shortly after Christmas dinner—firing my potato pellet gun in a mindless, methodical manner into the crimson heart of the words ‘For sale,’ time and time again, having fancying that those words glared at me in reproach.

At the time, I’m not quite sure what I was trying to accomplish. I think, privately, that I was hoping to shatter the sign itself with such insignificant, pale pellets. Hoping to break it, much like my heart. Mostly, though…I think I was simply angry. At the time---I wasn’t ready to scatter my memories to the winds in a vague manner—like a handful of ash to the winds. Or my childhood either, for that matter.

Broken glass, broke and hungry, broken hearts, and broken bones.

Looking back, I realize how illogical those sentiments were. But they were real, regardless. This is not to imply that there were a great deal memories within those slate colored walls. In all honesty—it’s a pity the house could not speak. It would tell of all the tears wept in bitter rage, despair.. it was filled with a bittersweet symphony of nameless emotions. But it was also stippled with stolen moments of laughter. Laughter that, hopeless romantic that I sometimes am, like to think still echoes as an eternal lullaby for those who live there now. There was joy---but also a great deal of sorrow.

But that joy…that sorrow…that restlessness, that yearning…that hope, all of it was ours. I didn’t think it was fair for another to purchase the house---it was not unlike buying memories from us at a set price. I suppose then, I was just afraid of losing a piece of myself. I half thought, at the time, that in selling the house—everything I cherished—every memory, every echo of laughter, every wide-wide Christmas that had me enthralled by the emerald branches of the Christmas tree, tip touching the ceiling as if it wanted to hug the sky itself—leaning over the banister with a raised index finger, and inquiring in a hushed, wondering tone, “What’s this?”

I feared all of that would suddenly just vanish from mind and heart alike…as if the house never existed in the first place.

…This is where we used to live.

Several years ago now, shortly after the house had been purchased, my father and I began the ponderous, familiar journey down the road that I had long memorized, and probably could’ve navigated even blindfolded, simply by feel and scent alone, that would lead us back to the house that was no longer ours. I can’t tell you why, precisely, I felt the need to do this. I suppose…I was in need of a final goodbye. A proper one.

Even so, I had half a notion to turn around, a stark feeling of dread settling into my stomach as we rounded the final bend. Though everything seemed much the same—still maple tree over shading the road in front of our house, same pink and white azalea bushes, same nameless, white-flowering bush screening the porch---a sanctuary for the drowsing lullabies of bumbling bees as they blundered this way and that…it felt different. For a fleeting moment, I had an inane impulse to tilt my head, as if simply changing the angle of my head would cause time to flow backwards and return to the way things were.

The porch seemed as familiar and welcome as the face of a long absent friend. Still a rich, flawless red. I felt myself relaxing—perhaps nothing had changed, after all. I was to be disappointed. My ready smile at such a little comfort faltered, then faded altogether. The porch itself was indeed still red—but gone were the uneven, bucked boards, straining upwards, cracked and weathered, yet smooth and grooved underfoot. The old boards had been replaced, the freshly cut wood still smelling vaguely of pine, even under the thick coating of paint. Gone, too, was the intricate, marbled pattern of the door itself—created throughout the years by the cracking and eventually peeling of the original paint itself—creating what I thought was a beautiful spider-silk design across the length of the door.

The door was now impassive, devoid of personality, I thought.

Why did you paint the walls? Why did you clean the floor? Why did you plaster over the hole I punched in the door?

The door, we soon found, was left unlocked---to better accommodate those still working on the house itself, allowing them to come and go as they pleased without the trouble of a key and lock. I remember feeling vaguely disgusted. We’d been robbed numerous times before, even when the doors had been locked. Not, of course, that anything of value remained in the house to steal anymore. But still. It was the principal of the thing. I found myself indignant on the behalf of the house.

I hadn’t meant to go in, really. It was reflex, I suppose. I was still very much used to flinging open the door and sauntering in as if I owned the place. So why should this occasion be any different, even if I was well aware that I no longer did, in fact, “own the place?” Whatever fleeting moment of joy at the simple familiar action of entering the house, whatever swagger I might have…disappeared the minute I stepped over the threshold.

It wasn’t just because of the plastic tarps laid over the normally hardwood floors like discarded, bored wraiths, covered in paint chips and paint stains. Everything was…different.

…This is where we used to live.

Of course, it wasn’t that I was truly expecting everything to remain the same. I simply wasn’t prepared for the significant amount of change that greeted me. The first thing I noticed is that they had deigned to paint over the fireplaces. Or rather, their ornate coverings. This nearly broke my heart, in all honesty. I had loved the covers---pale sky in color, with white trim—deer and a woman, I believe, etched into their surfaces. Now white. Blank as the mind of an insomniac author with a severe case of writer’s block.

I hadn’t the heart to see if they had bricked up the fireplaces themselves. The area we’d once used as a den had been transformed into a…kitchen. How absurd. Even more so, considering how a majority of the new high-tech appliances were not yet connected—instead, they crowded the center of the room, like milling, confused house guests.

The kitchen itself, that led into the…well, I suppose, other kitchen now, as it were…had not changed so distinctly. The pantry was still intact—minus the washing machine. The room seemed silent, and in turn, seemed strangely loud because of it. It signaled the absence of our old fridge--whose nose reminded me of an absentminded uncle humming to himself beneath his breath. Quiet. Reassuring. Gone. As was the stove that had burned food as often as it had cooked it. Mice used to make a game of popping in and out of the burners.

Mice. My gaze flickered then to the hole in the floor near the radiator—the very same hole more intrepid mice used to make midnight raids on the pantry. Gone. Sealed over in a barren, final manner.

Why did you keep the mousetrap? Why did you keep the dishrack?

The second story bathroom remained largely unchanged. The old shower had been replaced, but that was more of a necessity than a fashion statement. The floorboards, I noticed, had been replaced by sterile looking tile. No more sporadic growth of mushrooms standing in a merry row though the floorboards, brought on by the damp from the shower. That had delighted me to no end when I was a child.

I was obsessed with mushrooms. I blame it entirely on Fantasia. To this day, I refuse to eat mushrooms. Ditto to hot and sour soup—their mushrooms they place in it remind me of the little Asian, dancing mushrooms far too much. It’s a small wonder I don’t need therapy.

The bedrooms had changed. Everything from the wall color to wheezing air conditioner in my mother’s room and plush oriental carpet the color of sky in which I loved to dig my toes into and spend hours upon hours playing with my toys on, while our dog loved nothing more than to use it as a personal rear end scratch.

Even my room, and my playroom—utterly foreign. Not that I spent any real time in the playroom—much preferring the outdoors, even in winter. All the same…I was staggered at the sheer wrongness of the situation. There was no laughter here anymore.

These things used to be mine…I guess they still are. I want them back.

I saved my brother’s room for last. Even though he’d moved out years prior, the silence still deafened in his wake. It was haunting, to no longer hear the heavy bass of some heavy metal band or other causing the floorboards themselves to pulse as if with a life of their own—nor to smell the somewhat heady, sweet incense he so liked to burn.

It was vaguely comforting that these stairs, at least, still creaked—the rest were now silent. I find it ironic that his was the only room unchanged. Eternal, almost. A single scrap of childhood fondly pressed between the pages of white walls and silence. Right down to the haphazard shelves that stored vending machine treasures, crumbled uniforms, Sega cartridges, and an endless number of comics, all in mint condition.

I can’t help but smile as I turn, walk down the stairs, and gently close the door for a final time.

Broke into the old apartment, forty-two stairs from the street. Crooked landing, crooked landlord…narrow laneway filled with crooks.

They even troubled themselves with upgrading the storage shed. What once held only hoses dusty with disuse, parked cars graced by the shadow colored footprints of various felines upon their windshield and roof, and rusty tools is now..orderly. No longer are there holes in the tin—it even has a proper back door, now.

I suppose this last is to deter the folk that used to use our shed as a means from getting from point a to point b from the back alley. Always astonishing, having skinny, surly youths seemingly appear from the ether, to stroll across your backyard, to some unknown destination. I used to sit for hours at our picnic table and ponder where they came from…where they were going. It fascinated me. It mainly annoyed my father.

…This is where we used to live.

My second anchor in this unwanted sea of change is emerald. Silent, patient, weary sentry. I wonder…what does it make of the changes? I refer to my ‘Christmas tree’ I discovered when I was around three or so in the back alley. In reality, it was a cedar seedling---nothing extraordinary. But to me---found so shortly after the holidays, it was wondrous. I, who had moped around the house for days after we discarded our Christmas tree. So, amid my excited squealing, my father dug it up and replanted it in our spacious back yard, where I kept solemn, loving watch over it for years. It’s easily five times my height by now—and nowhere near finished growing.

I find myself throwing my arms around its scratchy branches. It’s scent is comforting, and I am glad that they did not decide to cut it down, as they had to at least two other trees. I had quite literally grown up with. How ironic that I used to be taller than it---now it would appear our roles are reversed.

I loved that tree. I still do.

Why did they pave the lawn? Why did they change the locks? Why did I have to break it, I only came here to talk.

Looking back, I realize now that I realized at that moment that there truly would be no returning to this place. That the locks would refuse entry to the spare keys in our possession. That this was, if nothing else, my closure. So I took a lingering look. At my tree, at the rambling roses, at the sky, even—as if that patch of sky were somehow different from the rest of the world. A snapshot within my mind.

…This is where we used to live.

I didn’t belong here. Not anymore.

How is the neighbor downstairs? How is her temper this year?

The neighborhood has changed, too. There used to be an elderly black lady a few houses down from ours. She was half-deaf, and rather crotchety, at that---one had only to have their shadow fall on her lawn, and she would rasp for us to “Get off my lawn!” from within the dark and forbidden shadows of her house.

My friends and I used to make a game of it---each of us seeing how far we could get on her lawn before the familiar scold would come forth. Her only love was her beloved Dachshund, Spike. Every evening, at dusk, whenever she had completed the task of hanging out her laundry, or picking flowers from her garden, you could hear her voice float on the summer breeze—a distinctive, “Spike!” It painted the stars. It made life seem that much more…innocent.

Spike died in a fire two years ago. I heard she herself passed away. Already, my childhood world seemed a little less bright.

I turned up your T.V. and stomped on the floor just for fun.

I guess the point was….

…I know we don’t live here anymore.

All the same, it was difficult to think that in just a matter of months, laughter would echo in those walls. Laughter and memories new and unique to another family. Would they ever ponder who had lived here before?

Would our memories still hold valid, if I chose to let go?

We bought an old house on the Danforth, she loves me, and her body keeps me warm.

We lived elsewhere now—my mother, my brother, and myself. We, too, were building new memories—but it was still hard to relinquish the old.

I’m happy here…but this is where we used to live.

The house was a sandcastle, of sorts. Perhaps it was time to let the waves claim it at last—and at long last build another from newer, fresher memories.

Broke into the old apartment, tore the phone out of the wall.

But then, would that, in turn… leave me with…

Only memories, fading memories…

Blending into dull tableaux.

I remember well simpler, lazy summer days---my face smeared with ice cream, my pants soaked through with slobber from my knucklehead dog Brindle, who never did properly bring back the sticks he fetched---the scent of ribs on the grill---my mother laughing as I tore through the freshly hung sheets on the clothes line, again and again, just to hear her laugh again. I miss those days…and sometimes…

…I want them back.