nasturtium climbs up the side of my childhood home
in the same spot I planted it when i was sixteen

the rest of the garden is gone

i feel like an outsider driving past the place I
lost my first tooth in, and nobody i know lives there anymore

i wonder if the new family knows how many times we ended up laughing so hard we cried, and i wonder if the
heights marked on our doorframe were painted over
the second they got in

when we moved out, the pictures hanging on my wall were stuffed into boxes that i still haven’t unpacked as an adult, and the echo of my completely empty bedroom was the hollowest sound i’d ever heard

growing up is dull, growing up is forgetting, growing up is moving on from everything that made you exactly what you are today, then learning to live with the change