neighborfriend

i think her name was heather.
she lived on my street. She had a black dog.

we played dolls. she tricked me into believing things.

she let me borrow her two piece swims suit, mom told me change. she let me borrow a necklace but mom was afraid it had lice. I didn't want to believe it. it was a smoothed rock on a black string.

we blew on the dandelions to make wishes. She wanted a bike. we'd pick them through the fences.

she had a brother. I think he scared me sometimes.

new house

we slept in the house before we moved in. in the family room.

was it winter?

we had sleeping bags that we couldn't dig far enough into to keep warm

2nd story

Where the glass met the window pane was black and dusty from age. I was tall enough to see through the window by then. Mrs. Ulphant was out there probably getting groceries out from the trunk of her small blue stationwagon (was it a station wagon). Surprised and happy she could see me I waved down to her. It was sunny, maybe even summer time, and in that light she waved back up to me in that brick red house.

I liked the window. I could see a few rooftops and streets. Mostly I felt brave by it, because I knew if the glass wasn't there, it could kill me.

My mom told me a story about a little boy who fell through the window, his father wrote a song about him. I knew it was a sad song. It was one of the first songs I ever really listened to. It made me a little afraid of windows like mine.

One of the neighbor boys heckled me once. He scooped me up like a sack of potatoes and held me up to the window, said he was going to throw me through it. He said that I'd land on the nice, nice roof. Ever since then I avoided him when I went to go see Carly.