The Idea

i cannot let it go. i cannot. i hoard the scraps of my childhood diaries and the marbles i won in the fifth grade. i can’t remember it, but it was there. i was there. i lived in that house, and with those people, and somehow i could still step outside and greet the sky and the ants that lined the pavement. i’d awake to morning birds chirping and feel as though i belonged there, on the plastic chairs in the backyard, in the back room, at the dining table. and yet now i don’t. when did it all change?? when did the six seats turn into five?? when was the last time i set out the cutlery?? when did i stop giving my mother my favourite fork, the one with etched flowers?? i don’t know, i don’t know anything. and yet i clutch at the strands of what remains. i so desperately severed my ties to that place- sawing off the last piece of evidence that i was even there at all. i cannot let go of it. i collect the strings off of the grass and tuck them neatly away. they sit with the scraps of my girlhood in the back of my closet. my marbles, my diaries, and now the frayed tethers of my childhood home.