Young Writers Society

I haven’t seen her since that night. She used to sit on the porch all morning and all afternoon, even in the winter, when there were no leaves in the trees and only cats strayed the streets. She seemed to be always waiting for something, but when I asked her what it was, she couldn’t answer me…

When I returned to the house it was completely deserted. I wasn’t sure if I should go inside; even back then, she only let me enter the house once. So I walked around the porch and let my fingers travel the railways she used to lean against and the steps the used to sit on. I stayed outside as long as I could, until the wind was so cold against my cheeks I knew I either had to do what was asked of me or turn away. And I couldn’t possibly turn away.

The first time I saw her, she was sitting on those very steps. She was looking down the street, and her face was so pretty I just had to talk to her. Before I knew what I was doing, I had walked up to her, and it was as if I had known my her my whole life, as if she had always been there, and only now I was remembering her. All I wanted to do was reach out and stroke her hair, but my hands remained in my coat pockets, unmoved. When I asked her what she was doing, she didn’t even turn around to look at me. It was as if I had been a part of her all along too.

“This street looked longer” she said. And I so desperately wanted her to look at me.

“It’s always been like this.” The words just fell into place. I wonder if our dialog had already been plotted out, just words sitting on the edge of our lives, just waiting to be spoken.

“No…it was longer.” And she fell silent. There was nothing left to be said, and so I left.

I never talked about her. Not to anyone. She never told me not to, but I knew I shouldn’t. That house wasn’t supposed to have anyone living in it, and I knew that very well. We all did.

It wasn’t rumored to be haunted or anything like that. Kids didn’t dare each other to ring the doorbell and run. They didn’t quicken their step when they walked past it and it was starting to get dark. But the porch always seemed a little too empty, and the porch swing always seemed a little too lonely. And somehow we all knew. That house was part of us all. It lived in our street, and it lived in our houses, and it lived in our bedroom. It lived in our bed, at night, when our feet were cold, right before we slipped into sleep.

One autumn, I remember walking up to her porch and for one second thinking she wouldn’t be there. The thought of her flickered in my head, and for a split second she was almost forgotten. Then I saw her sitting on the porch railing. I still don’t understand what happened right then. Maybe she was getting ready to leave. But I saw her first, I saw her before she could get up and go. I guess that’s what made her stay that moment. For that moment I was enough to keep her here one more day, and I wish, oh I wish I weren’t.

We looked at the street and we looked at the stars. I swept the porch, which was always littered with cigarette butts. I told her about the silences at my dining table, the clock hanging over the fire place, the white corners of my room. I told her how heavy the water from my shower was, and how deafening the grass in my backyard was. I told her how the wind filled up my body in cold days. I told her how my fingers ached. How the headlights burned my eyes.

“You shouldn’t look directly at them” she told me one day, while I was sitting on the porch swing and she was sitting on the steps.

“Huh? At what?”

“The headlights. The car headlights. So they won’t burn your eyes.”

“I have to look directly at them. How will I know who is behind the steering weal if I don’t?”

She turned to look at me. By then she was already constantly looking at me.

“Why do you need to do that?”

“I need to know if it’s someone who can take us away from here.”

I don’t know why I said we. I knew she wouldn’t be able to leave with me. I always knew. But I just wanted so desperately for her to be able to leave…

She told me how she thought the streets had become smaller. Shorter. How the seasons went by quicker. She told me about the air in between the floor and the ceiling of the porch. She told me about the house, and the people in the house. She told me about her sister. She told me about her father. She told me about her grandmother.

Sometimes I could hear noises from inside the house. Sometimes it was the voice of a child, and sometimes it was a grown man yelling something. She would never tell me.

I still remember the morning she did. It was gray, and the sun wasn’t up yet. The light was all around us, coming from everything, the sky, the clouds, the trees, the rocks, her, and me. She was looking down at the steps she was sitting on, searching, always searching.

I knew it was no good asking. But our words were there, and it had never been up to me whether to speak them or not.

“What are you waiting for?” She had never told me she was waiting. At those days, we were all waiting. “What are you searching?”

“I’m not waiting” she whispered.

“Yes you are.”

She paused. It wasn’t long. I didn’t wish for her to start speaking quickly, and it was all as in a play, a play acted out to empty seats.

“There was a fire. It stared in the kitchen. No one was watching. We should have been watching.”

She looked me in the eyes.

“I ran downstairs when I felt the smoke. I ran to the kitchen. And it was such a small fire! But it spread so quickly…before I even knew what was happening.”

I’ll always remember how she said felt.

“I stood there, and I didn’t know what to do. I heard the crackling, and I felt the heat, and then I heard something snap behind me. They had closed the door.”

I listened, but I already knew the story. I had it etched in my brain. I could see her moving in the fire so clearly it could be happening that very minute. It developed in my mind like a memory, a memory I held so dearly that no detail had been erased…

“I didn’t understand at first. I walked to the door and waited. I tried to open it, but it didn’t budge. I could hear them screaming about not letting the fire spread, but the flames were so high I could barely hear anything. They reached to the ceiling now, they crept around every corner. It had spread so fast! I beat against the door, but they wouldn’t open it. So I waited for them to open it. I waited and I waited. And then the flames were beating with me, behind my hands, on the door, under my feet. And then I waited.”

The last night I ever saw her was the last night of winter. The stars weren’t shining yet when I walked up to the house. The world was quiet. It was quiet for us.

She was sitting on the steps of the house, looking down the street.

“They seem smaller” she said as I approached. She didn’t turn to look at me.

“Why are you still waiting? You can leave, you can leave on your own.” The wind beat against my face and my eyes stung and watered. “Please.”

“Why are they smaller?”

“You don’t need anyone to set you free. You can’t wait forever. We can’t wait forever. We have to walk on. Please. There has to be something better…something better than this.”

She looked up at me. The waiting was so scarred on her…it was ripped into her skin, pressed against her eyes, etched deep into her skull and covered up by her hair. It was scarred so deeply on her hands, on her arms, on her skin, and I looked at her skin, looked at it for the first time, and I saw her for the first time ever, for the first time in my life, and in her skin I saw my skin, and I saw the skin of her father, the skin of my mother, the skin of her children’s children, her skin, your skin, our skin.

“I need to wait. At least, until I know what I’m waiting for.”

“No! You don’t! You can open your door! You don’t need this…you don’t need these streets, and these…all of these. You can open the door…just…try a little.”

It was what she needed. I wouldn’t have thought it, but it was. The words left me and entered her, like they were meant to all along. They were her words to begin with, she just needed me to give them to her.

She stood up, and tuned around, and got into the house. It was quick. She never looked back. My hand wasn’t held, and my name wasn’t called, but I knew I was supposed to go in after her. I followed her feet and I entered the house, and the furniture inside was all exactly in the place I knew it would be. The kitchen was to the right, after the big wooden shelves with the china on it. Just like it always had been. Her pace never slowed, and she went in.

I don’t remember how long ago that was. It doesn’t really matter.

I only returned to that house once again after that night. And when it happened I was already grown, and I had opened the door to that town a long time ago already. I walked up to the porch without hesitation.

It wasn’t as empty, and it wasn’t as lonely.

I thought about going in. I even rested my hand on the doorknob for a second. But I knew I wasn’t going to find anything in there. And that was good. It was like it was supposed to be.

So I stood there in the wind, my hands in my pockets and my nose cold from the wind. I stood there, and I knew what I was supposed to do. On that porch, I’ll always know what to do. But sometimes, we need a little time before we can move on from our parades.

I took my hands out of my pockets. One held a cigarette, and one held a lighter. The cigarette was put in my mouth, and her tip was lit on fire. I didn’t hesitate. We shouldn’t ever.

The cigarette dropped to the ground. Before I had left the final porch step, the flames were already tall. The fire had spread on the cigarette butts and dead leaves, and on the air between the porch floor and ceiling.

The flames were tall and loud, and I could feel their warmth on my back as I walked away. I didn’t think it would burn like that, but sometimes they do. Sometimes it’s just written, all along. All along.