how to price my childhood by Ally Burg

see it before it's gone!
open house
9 to 11 a.m.

featuring
three beds and two and a half baths and
refreshments and
that scratch on the floor
from when i thought i could fly
so i jumped off the couch and
that dent in the mantel
from when i swung my field hockey stick
during a particularly animated demonstration and
walls covered in
invisible ink messages
from my magic kit in the second grade.

my house sold quick, and there’s a new bike outside
right where we built tunnels in the snow and
where the sunflower grew five feet tall and
where i drew profane messages with chalk and
where that guy kissed me for the last time.

the new owners paint over another layer
to that already thick paint
in my bedroom
where it was once
white for a toddler
light yellow for two opinionated sisters who shared a room
(it was the only color they could agree on)
lime green for maturity’s sake
(they were middle schoolers now)
bright blue when her sister left for college
(she wanted something of her own)

it’s been four years
and i can still hear which stairs creak the loudest
and see those fluorescent lights in the basement.
i could open the bathroom drawer
to find bags of rubber bands for braces
that i refused to wear
and can feel the wooden table we colored,
under the guise that our parents wouldn’t notice,
and spot Magic Treehouse on that huge bookshelf,
scrawled with my name,
spelled with a backwards A.

but, alas,
my childhood has long been packed up and donated and sold,
along with my first car and my summer camp and my snow globe and my twin sized bed.
I drink tea for fun now
and don’t need to lie about my age in liquor stores.
I apply for big girl jobs in cities I’ve never been
and drive home all by myself to
a new town
in a bigger house
with my own bedroom
and not a single secret message on the wall.

so, alas,
my childhood,
see it before it’s gone!


sold!