“The key they’d given me still fit the lock, but the house no longer felt like home.”

A year has passed since that day. I’ve returned home.

The front door still groaned, the brass knocker still barked. I stand in the foyer, and see a chandelier, swaying, and all its lights, shimmering. I stand atop a maroon and gold carpet and look right; there is the office, the mahogany desk, the rows of books upon the shelf; I look left, and there is the dining room, with purple walls and dusty chairs and unused plates; I look forward, I look up—the staircase.

Upstairs, there is a room, drab and dull; beside it is a second, gray and forlorn. There are others—two others—a total of four rooms. All lived-in, not lively.

I know this house.

I know of the basement, with its ragged couch and its pool table, the left-center hole torn.

I know of the kitchen and living room, their two tvs, the box full of legos on the counter between them.

I know of the gazebo and the pool, the former not used enough, the latter, once too many.

I know of outside; the yard, where we ran, and the swings and the trees, where we swung and towered.

I know of the laundry room. It is plain. Outside that room is the garage.

In the garage, steps.

Upon those steps, on that Thursday night, we sat. We talked. I told you my hopes and my dreams, my alienation in school, the numbness that caressed my mind with deceptive compassion, like a cruel man’s hands cupping a baby bird—I told you all there was to tell, and you listened.

A week passed.

You drowned.

The key yet fits. There is the house.

There is no you.