P.S. We don’t own this house. We knew the move was coming, even if we didn’t know when. It’s the reason I refused to put down roots. Refused to mark your height against the wall. Why record our lives on walls we cannot keep?
But I am learning that we can’t move like ghosts through this life, or these walls, and this borrowed house has a memory all the same.
Just three inches wide, a wall sits across from the toilet, close enough to catch my head if I lean forward. White paint is rough and peeling in the place where my head meets it.
Where my head rested when radiation left me too exhausted to keep it up, while I had to pee for the millionth time because if I didn’t drink five Nalgenes a day I couldn’t swallow and the panic would set in.
Where my head rested because the world was swirling, two of everything, and nothing would stay still. Not vertigo or a complication of the radiation like they thought at first. Something new instead. Multiple Sclerosis.
Where my head rested when I saw those two little lines and for that incredible, unbelievable moment was the only person in the universe who knew you existed, my little love.
Where my head rested when I was up every night for nine months, while you wiggled and danced and scratched at my hip bone, and I laughed at everyone who suggested I rest now before you arrived.
Where my head rested when you decided it was time.
Where my head rested in the weeks after you were born when my only time away from you was a fifteen-minute sitz bath each night to ease the pain. I don’t want an episiotomy, I told the nurse in a panic. No one does, she assured me. We don’t use them if we have another option. I feel it, I told her. I feel it, I feel it. I felt it for a long time after you arrived. I’m not mad; it’s just a part of the story.
Where my head rested when my radiation oncologist called out of the blue to ask if I’d talked with my surgeon yet, about my latest scan. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine for now.
Where my head rested when your dad called to tell me he got the job, and we were both so excited to leave this place behind.
Where I rest my hand now, trying to say goodbye to the only home you’ve ever known. Goodbye to three inches of peeling wall, that left specks of dry paint in my hair on the hardest nights and the best morning of my life. Goodbye to the borrowed house that will remember us when we move on.
Holly Harrison Cline
Holly Harrison Cline (she/her) is a writer living in Pennsylvania, USA. She studied English Literature and Theology at Eastern University and has found joy in the written word as long as she can remember. She believes storytelling, in all its mediums, is one of our greatest sources of hope, comfort, and connection in this world. In addition to a collection of poetry focused on matrescence, she is currently working on her first novel. You can find her work in Clover + Bee Magazine and in the upcoming Summer Issue of Raw Lit Magazine.