This House

Yes, it’s stupid, but I wanted this to be the house

To go to for Thanksgiving when I’m 30,

After all, this is the house where I slept with boys for the first time,

In those platonic fumbling moments during “co-ed” sleepovers,

And told horror stories on a creaky bed at 3 AM.

This is the house where I told my first crush that I liked him,

In the unjudging darkness of my pink-walled room,

The eyes of wooden dolls looking down benevolently

At my hopeful, hopeless six-year-old self.

This, the house whose nooks and crannies I knew

Like the curves of the handle of my suitcase,

Where I could fling the door open after getting home on a red-eye flight

And pad across the hall in a millisecond flat to jump on my twin bed.

The floor in the entranceway is a black-and-white chessboard,

And it occurs to me when I walk on it with sockless feet

That there’s no other place where cold marble is so welcoming.

I’ve come back so many times, that I can ride the curve of the freeway winding into this city

in my dreams, and I do.

This is the house whose green walls were Base when we played tag,

We played out in this backyard with mud and hands and knees,

Used sticks and bandanas for Capture the Flag games where

No one knew the rules. We took prisoners without asking

And when we won, we yelped from one wooden deck

Across to the other, then went inside for watermelon slices bigger than our heads

laughing at the sticky juice,

as if the raindrops that go missing from Seattle in the summertime,

dripping down our cheeks onto these granite kitchen floors like a baptism.