Sometimes, you get exactly what you want

Swimming Pool of Marbles

I was worried we were on the verge of the second Great Depression.

“We own our house, right?” I asked my dad in panicked voice

because my roommate told me everything would be okay,

IF you owned your house.

“No, hun-knee, weyare steel making payments on it.”

 

My family has lived at 5 Misty Court for thirty years.

That’s why five is my favorite number.

That house is home base, my objective correlative, my constant.

 

I know it like a lover.

 

The grey side paneling, busted doorbell and glass shattered

by a softball I swung at and made contact for the first time.

I wept as white paint dried erasing years of measurements

stacked up like used textbooks.

 

I know the map of the creaky floorboards from sneaking in past curfew,

determined my parents wouldn’t find out, but they always asked.

I couldn’t lie ever since I threw that browned apple over the fence

And you spanked me for saying I ate it, core and all.

 

That doesn’t sound like a bad idea now—to consume something whole,

seeds and all—planting a life force in your belly.

 

Please, don’t ever move. I can’t afford to buy that house from you.

There are too many memories—a swimming pool full of marbles:

 

Of water balloon fights, running through sprinklers,

shooting fireworks off the back deck and exploding G. I. Joes

with firecrackers

 

Of charting undiscovered territory beyond my backyard

and walking through sewage pipes because I liked the dark

and hearing my own voice echo back

 

Of  playing truth or dare and kissing a boy for the first time

and feeling so guilty that I cried innocence into my pillow

and begged my mom not to tell dad

 

Of our house getting struck by lightning after Christmas,

all new electronic toys fried and nightmares of outlets

 

Of playing detective in my dad’s sport coat

and watching my neighbor cry after she found her mom in the tub,

Bathed in her own blood

 

Of going to the park after dark to see a boy

who pushed me so fast on the merry go round that I felt tipsy

until my dad spotted me with his headlights and made me go home

 

Of being on the swim team before I was old enough

And finding my dad’s rifle in the closet while playing hide and go seek

 

Of kissing my first boyfriend in his car parked outside my house,

Of crying my eyes dry when he left for college.

 

Of my brother’s friend sleeping in my bed and feeling deceptive

because I had a secret.

Of watching my brother cry because his best friend died in his sleep

 

Of being angry at my dad because he gave me Sense and Sensibility

for my birthday and I didn’t even like Jane Austen

 

Of my sister’s baby falling down the stairs

 

Of holding my mom’s hand at the kitchen table after the doctor called

saying she had cancer in her bone.

Of telling her I’d never leave her again.

Of my mom telling me she never wanted to hold me back.

Of sleeping in her bed that night and confessing we’d never been so scared.

 

All the tears, all the shouts, all the meals, all the goodbyes

This is one lover I will never release.