87/90, alley

I've been waiting for the moment where I realize that I'm leaving college. I'm waiting to get sad, start missing everyone and panic about what comes next. It hasn't happened yet, and I don't expect it to. I'm not the sort to look back, to go back or to try too many things twice. That doesn't mean I don't get nostalgic. Holy Jesus, do I.

I have a habit of using the alley behind my house to walk home instead of the tree-lined front walk. There are things that I pause to notice everyday, and it's never the same... it could be the black cat or the cat without a tail; the picture frames that appear at the neighbor's garage; the paint pealing from single-paned glass windows; a rotting squirrel; a Tonka truck; a treehouse.

The treehouse is barely hanging on. It's hidden by a line of young trees and shrubs along the alley and the tree that's grown comfortably around it. I always imagine the sound the thinning boards would make when I my bulk came to rest on its floor. I wonder what it feels when the wind blows, what I would feel hiding inside when the wind blows.

I imagine some ghost-boy, the same ghost-boy that played with the antique toy trucks lining the back windows of the house, jumping from branch to branch of the tree, as thin and frail as the treehouse but neither of them caring and neither of them breaking and neither of them attached to this decade, not even the one before or the one before that.

I walk a little further, wondering what family lives in that house, and get to our neighbors.

Our neighbors are a funny group. We live in an older neighborhood, not quite full of college kids and not quite "put together." I live for the mornings when I step out the back door in time to find their garage door open–the globes and boxes and lawn furniture lining the space are a puzzle, a traffic jam, a Jenga set all hinged on some small, seemingly insignificant piece in the middle. Only the son–the silent, long-haired, loping son–can manipulate it, moving aside a shelf and a trash bag to find, miraculously, just the potato masher and set of magnets that he was looking for.

Coming home, from the opposite side of the garage, I catch a glimpse of their window, one I guess belongs in their kitchen. The glass lining each shelf catches my eye, and I pause. I wonder if they stare back at me, worry at what I'm thinking, why I'm waiting, what I'm waiting for. I want to sit in the shadow behind their garage. I want to go to the kitchen and see the glass paint colors on what I'm sure is a speckled Formica counter, an antique ceramic sink, a metal two-chair dining set.

There's an insane amount of goings-on this summer, and I can't stop thinking about them–alternating between being scared and being excited, both to the point where  I can't breathe. I've let all of that go for these last two days, stopped most thinking and planning, and walked through the alley, through campus, through my house, through my classes, feeling the sun on my pink-painted toes and biding my time, feeling each moment like a new freckle, one new moment of sun that becomes permanent.

see the alley pictures on my flickr