235 flocktown lane

the house i grew up in was big and creaky and you could lift up the floorboards and find treasures beneath. i used to sit in my sister’s room, peel up those old planks of wood and reach into the foot-deep space to find either bugs or coins or notes or a bracelet or a faded hair tie. treasure hunting, we called it. we spread out all our findings, starry eyed and oooh and aaaah and then a glance and a smile and we’d wonder who these mystery people were, these people who perhaps lived in the very same house, or perhaps they were gypsies or adventurers or it was tom sawyer and huck finn and they were using our house to stow away their wealth. my sister’s room connected to a guest room where we kept a collection of troll dolls, round tiny tummys, big tufts of bright colored hair, flaming light on top of a candle. it is the only thing i remember about that room, the large chest that held our trolls who we truly believed to come alive at night and whisper secrets about magic in our ears. i know this room connected to my father’s office, but i spent so little time in there i cannot recall even a faint image of the space. however, i know the office connected to my parents’ room because i remember the locked door and the big window next to the bed and the vanity mirror with the lipstick and the pearls and the faded perfume and the picture of her mother in her wedding dress. next to my parents’ room was a long hallway - so long i refused to walk it alone in the dark because i knew about the slimy creepy things that happened without color and light and the sun, so i would hold my mom’s hand tight as i could and we would run run run! into my room and i would jump on my bed under the covers and she would shut the door really quick and then turn to me and smile, it’s going to be okay honey we made it! she would sit on the foot of my bed and tell me stories about the tree in front of the house, a pine tree large enough to enjoy picnics underneath, large enough to not see the top of it unless you were multiple feet away from it’s trunk with your neck craned back and your eyes to the sun. she would tell me about how the tree was magic and went to royal balls and met with princes and princesses and could go anywhere in the world she wanted if she wished hard enough. once i was near sleep she would creep out back into the darkness and leave me alone, and if i was still awake enough, i would crawl over to my window seat and say goodnight to the tree and search for shooting stars. i would think about my sister and my mother and father and how the floors creaked and how one day i would grow up and have a little girl who wished on stars and everything in this whole world would be perfect. back under my covers, safe and warm, i would drift to sleep, dreaming of a world with faeries and flowers and unicorns and trolls with blue hair, an innocent smile that slowly fades once you reach the darkest point of sleep, when the flowers begin to fade - outlines become blurry and out of focus, out of reach, and you realize the world you’ll wake up in will have a dark hallway outside your door and all the color has somehow slipped through the cracks.