Her

If houses could speak, then this one would know why I came here today.

She’s known me a while. Since birth, in fact. She’s carried all of my secrets. This house is a woman. But more on that later. A house this well versed in stories really should be the one in charge here. She knows the way I ache. Because I was born into her walls. I turned 18 here. I smoked my high little brain off here. I told her I’d travel and I’d come back and my old rooms were inhabited by interesting, educated people. I came back every few months or years. Sometimes she didn't see me for a while. Sometimes there was a boy. Sometimes their absence was why I was there. She knows why I’m back again. I wonder if I look like a woman to her now. I wonder if she can see how women feel like little children still even when they’ve gone off and done brave, amazing things but they don’t feel neither brave nor amazing.

She watched my first heartache. I cried in her body. I screamed because the pain tried to exit my body. But it didn’t work. Sometimes the lights in her home didn’t work and everything looked dark. It was very scary. And I got lost in the dark. The doctor tried to prescribe me the pills it takes to make the rooms light again. But it didn’t work. Sometimes people held me in their arms to make the lights turn on again. Sometimes I walked to her because I wonder what I did with the light switch and maybe she had some sort of idea. It was possible, I told her, that as a kid I'd left it somewhere in her. There were lots of places the switch could be hiding. 

I told her I didn’t know if I was making the right choice. If she had any idea, could she ... maybe ... possibly ... tell me what to do. No one knows me better. But she said nothing. She just stared. I hope I look like a woman to her now. I hope she sees me growing old with the light switch on and I hope she’s sees what I’ve made. 

But she and I both know none of it matters. I made all of it because the switch had gone dim. I will do anything not to be lost. I think she got restless because she finally spoke to me. I had been doing all of the talking. She said I speak differently. She said I should stop looking for the switch in people and places. She said she had things to do.

She said, “Look at my walls. I am rebuilding myself too, little girl.”

She told me what it felt like when they carved the things out and sold the things that made her feel beautiful. She told me that we all left, every single one of us and that I hadn't been the only one that told her I missed her. She said we all kept our secrets there and that keeping other people's secrets was too much to bear, but she did it. Without question. She just did. She never went searching for the switch.

"Yes, but what do I do?" I had to know. Anything, I will try anything. I'll do anything. I just waited again. It was futile.

She stopped telling me what to do, apart from one thing.

She said it was time.