Meadow Lane

Meadow Lane

In the house I grew up in, there’s writing on the wall; little marks made by little hands climb ladders to the sky. Each one telling of a little kid who got a little taller, and tired thirty-somethings who worked harder than they should. In the bedroom I grew up in, there’s a burn in the carpet. Failed attempts at teenage witchcraft scorched a perfect circle in the fringe. On the house I grew up in, there’s missing paint in the back, kicked off by our shoes propped up to the stars. And just maybe, if you try, you can still hear whispers talking about small people with small minds and all the bones of our buried dogs, and how we couldn’t wait to get away from this town. What I didn’t know then is the thing no one knows, that I’d be here, all these years later, missing the house I grew up in.