wompwomp4

[wompwomp4]

i wish we could go back to being kids, Leah.

that’s not to say that i want to re-live those years; cold, wet, angry years. i’m saying i want to re-live you. i want to gather up those summer/autumn/winter/spring days in poulsbo, put them safe on my shelves where i can remember them.

my memories come and go, but i can’t forget walking through your neighborhood (always your neighborhood, not mine. i used to joke that if you came within a ten foot radius of my house, you'd explode), past the worn houses with their overcrowded decks and equally overgrown lawns.

past the house with the fenced-in yard and the yapping dog, rusted car in the driveway. down the hill, pocked with pot holes and muddy grass, dead trees that will be heavy with crab apples and too much pollen in three months.

down to the street, make a right, echoes of heated conversations carried in the breeze. four blocks to the next neighborhood, with it’s shiny new houses- fresh coats of paint, artificial gardens, and security cameras watching us warily from their perches in windows, blinds drawn tightly.

something about them used to make me so angry. i made an effort to pass by with as much disturbance as possible. i was so loud. i still am. always have been. i think you know, Leah, that it’s my way of forcing my presence into the world, of demanding not to be heard, but to be listened to. ‘don’t ignore (forget) me!’

you’re the only person i know that can love me like this– loud and mean and broken.

it doesn’t take long to leave the houses and their people, with their range rovers and organic granola, behind.

now we cross the street, half running because people come flying at this turn. we’re giggling at the same jokes we’ve been telling for years when we meet the new strip of sidewalk. we hurry down the block, towards the pizza/tattoo/coffee shops all squeezed into one building, the one with the bench (you know). turn the corner, and we’re home.

we invade the stores of downtown poulsbo, with their overpriced antiques and mass-produced 'rustic' home decor. make our rounds; the bead store (im sorry), the bakery, pass the shitty coffee shop on the way to the pocket-sized book store, the dainty stationary store, the diner and the seafood place, sometimes down to Mora's. businesses that had to learn to accept us.

we make up stupid names for some of these stores, ones i still can't let go of them after all this time. leave most of them with nothing, borderline harass the locals (mostly me).

always, we wind up at Cups, share a mexican brownie after pretending to read the menu. sometimes, we get milkshakes. sit outside if the weather is feeling generous. usually, it isn't.

we're here for hours, suspended in these moments. i yearn to feel them again. i can see your face so clearly. we were so young, the weight of it all wasn't quite as heavy as it is now.

downtown poulsbo isn’t the same anymore, but neither are we. we grew out of it, and it grew away from us. but i still see you in those stores, on the pier breathing in sea salt, down the sidewalk. i still see you on the hilly walk home, illuminated by the dying sunlight. in the abandoned house and the barn, at copper top and metro market, and the thicket of trees in front of Sakai.

i'm lucky now if i get to see you once a year, but in my mind, i always see you, and i love you. you are otherworldly, then and now.