i can't drink hot apple cider without thinking about the house
with uneven kitchen counters and gloomy walls.
back when i used to steal rachel’s cinnamon
and stay locked in my room whenever i heard people talking in the house.
the year i lived in that house was the year jenny and i did a full moon ritual
to cleanse ourselves of whatever was weighing us down.
we broke bottles against a wall
and spent hours talking about the tattoos we wanted
and the people who made us feel like the walls were closing in.
i let omar pay for my concert ticket and my drinks
until he wouldn't let me pay for his.
i told him i wasn't interested in boys,
but then in january i fell so hard for a boy who left the country,
i had to find a new word for myself.
i didn’t believe in ghosts,
but i knew our house was haunted
because i could hear the piano playing at night
and there were some nights i had to stay up until dawn
because i couldn’t fall asleep in the dark.
that was back when i used to walk everywhere,
and when i closed my finger in the door
and had to start painting my nails to cover up the black spot.
that winter was the worst.
my feet got stuck to the scale
and i decided to stop eating and keep smoking
until the number i saw was less than three digits.
i was so deep in my own head,
i didn’t notice how everyone i was close to was drifting out of my life.
i cried on my nineteenth birthday
and spent a night drinking so much
i came home and fought with rachel
and was as honest as i needed to be.
so in january i started packing up shoe boxes
and taking them with me every time i went back home.
the fort st. house was never my home,
i just lived there.
jenny and turner had two black cats,
and i still wonder if they split the cats up when they broke up.
i always thought i’d get to see willow grow up.
i wanted to live alone so bad,
and most of the time it’s exactly what i need,
but sometimes i miss those late night conversations on my bed
or having someone to talk to while i cook dinner
or even just knowing you’re sharing space with another living being.
but if i could relive any part of that year,
it would be sitting under that november full moon with jenny,
reading our secrets to each other
before setting them on fire.
that night we went to her parent’s house and ate cookies and drank tea
and we stayed up late and watched practical magic
and i still have those secrets written down somewhere
and i hope they're not still true.
i want to believe we really did work magic that night
because i wanna believe something about that year was permanent.