“I hear you, you know.  Miss and her parents are so much like any other thinking person, expecting that something that hears must have ears, and a mind to process with.  No.  I have heard you these seven years. I’m lifting my sourceless voice, for one final goodbye, before you leave me for another.”

     My mother and stepfather were away without me, then… finding my new suitor for the next few years.  I have no choice in this matter; it is as it has always been.  I am alone in my house, in my room.  My room.  My only sanctuary since my parents divorced, and left the house I grew up in.  My home.  The door of this room is always locked, a habit I acquired right around the time I began to realize that my father’s nightly rages came from a bottle, and not from his “stressful working environment.”  It is always dark here.

     “Every house has its center, and mine was this room for you.  I regret that my walls have not been thick enough to protect you from the sounds.  I loathe that my doors were capable of such thunder, when closed in anger.  But we lived through this, did we not?  You made your music, and I echoed it as best I could, with my failing voice.  I have tried to muffle these doors’ slams.  How could you ask for more, dove?”

     The walls and ceiling are covered with cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that have never seen their true potency; one must have live for a while in the light, to give off light when all else is dark.  Breaking up the monotony of the universe, a few token posters.  Ani Difranco.  The Beatles.  A Forever-27 poster, featuring Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain.  I sometimes wonder why it is that I am attracted to the music of the dead.  Sometimes, it makes every bit of sense in the world.

     “My walls were strong for you.  Had I the power, I would have given you and your stars the light you needed, on all those dark nights.  I did the best I could, and how dare you ask for more than this.  I hear they’ve already sold me.  I hear you’ve found my replacement.  I hear you protesting; do you truly believe you had nothing to do with this?”

     It is a crowded room, but it is comfortable.  The furniture therein is a confused hodgepodge of very old and very new pieces, none of which are in good repair.  A comically grandiose six-foot-four-inch tall desk, topped by a lifetime’s supply of worn out stuffed animals, dominates the room.  A strange excuse for a bed, elevated to waist height, takes up nearly all of the floor space not claimed by the rickety chest of drawers, white metal shelves, or dressing-table-turned-altar.  Boxes from the attic are scattered everywhere; I’ve been packing.

     “I know you’ve been faithful, all these years.  No one has set foot in your room but close family, and I know you’ve made efforts to preserve this chastity.  For this I am grateful.  But I’ve seen pictures of these houses, and I know your motivation.  Bigger, are they?  Need more room to take care of your grandparents?  You could just as easily have expanded on me.  I am flexible.  What does this new house have that I don’t?”

     Mom and Steve are gone now, house hunting.  It is only when they leave that I venture out into the rest of the house.  I have few memories or attachments here.  To the right, the hallway branches out into two oddly shaped rooms.  Their room, and the spare bedroom. I never touch the master bedroom, and the “Spare Bedroom” has been haunted, since my stepbrother was sent off to prison again.

     The hallway still bears the massive patched-and-painted-over hole, where my stepfather and his son would fight, late at night.  It is directly across from my door.  Further on, a bathroom, and then the family room.  Only guests spend any time in the family room, the family always sits in the dining room, or kitchen.  This area is filled with antiques and expensive things my mother collects to make a good impression on our few visitors.

     “I was never anything, but what I was for you.  I tried so hard to be a good memory for you.  I wanted to be the difference between going home and coming home.  I realize now that I have failed you, and that I was never quite good enough.  I recognize that, sometimes, trying and failing are in league with one another.  I watch you as you take away the trinkets you gave me, the things that made me more than paint and glass.”

     I lie stretched out on my back in the middle of the family room.  Assignments I’ve put off out of sheer lack of willpower crush me down, making it hard to breathe.  I close my eyes in perfect surrender, and images and voices come to me, unbidden, rolling over one another, trampling each other in their desperate stampede through a one-way door broken at its hinges.  Helpless, I listen.

     “I still have your tree, and you’re not taking it with you.  Do you remember, when you were still a child, what you carved there?  Don’t you find it ironic, that you began in this place with that huge piece of broken glass, bearing witness to a love that never existed?  Has anything changed, darling?

     “Look, there, in the corner under the window.  You’ve tried to wash away the evidence, but it will always be mine.  Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten yourself curled up on the floor with a pen in hand, too crazy to find paper, writing your masterpiece poem on the wall?  Do you remember reading it a few weeks later, and not understanding a word of it?  Do you remember washing it away?  Tell me what has changed.

     “I know you remember the squirrel who jumped onto your shoulder, seeking sanctuary from your murderous cat.  You tried to pet him, like the fool you are; you tried to get too much from the moment, and he ran off.  What has changed, that you now think you can take him with you?  And the hawk who sat dazed on your front step when you came home from school with those dark thoughts in your head.  Do you remember leaning in inches away from a bird of prey bigger than your face?  Do you remember petting that baby blue jay, still so innocent that she didn’t recognize you as the danger you are?  These new houses don’t have woods.  I bet they don’t even have trees.  These memories are MINE now and you’re leaving them with me.  So pack up your trinkets, that’s all you have left.”

     I visualized this house, bare save the curtains and the carpets.  Then they’ll rip up the carpets, we’ve lived above them far too long for them to be purged of us.  When I leave, will this house be rid of me?  If I can move on, will it as well?  How long will these bulwarks against mortality stand, before the ocean sweeps them away?  Am I stronger than the ocean?

     “Am I?”