It was the kind of place memories lingered in, the kind of place that traps moments like wasps to flypaper and leaves pieces of them lingering in the night air like so many torn wings. Now the average passerby might not notice this, might not even care that a fraction of their being is left behind as they walk past but you, you saw something in there.
There in the window of the house that eats memories was a face, or rather parts of it. The parts that are the first to be devoured as a body rejoins the dirt it came from. Those familiar soulful eyes, that wide grin full of joy as your respective gazes met and they remembered those nine perfect years you spent together.
You'd watched over him from eight weeks to almost ten years only for a car to take him from you in one tire-screech-split-second. You may have lived next door to the house that eats memories but you still found yourself gradually forgetting his face, the way he yelled at strangers, the way he liked to hide plastic bottles behind the sofa.
When you saw the parts of his face that the house had latched onto most you ran to meet him, hoping against hope that somewhere, in some room, he might be whole and he might be your little boy again but that wasn't how the house worked.
As soon as you'd smashed the small window on the back door to unlatch it, you felt the air turn colder and your mind grow heavier, number as the house feasted on your life. By the time you made it to the kitchen you heard the polite cough of your uncle who killed himself thirty years ago.
He looked just like the day you found him, head opened up like a ripe watermelon and clutching a note that only said "forgive her". His reappearance was accompanied by the sound of paws against concrete as your little boy paced around, now snarling like he used to whenever he saw your ex.
Perhaps he knew you were the one driving the car that hit him.
Your uncle's hand lingered on the back door,waiting to let those heartbroken eyes and dripping jaws in.
There in the window of the house that eats memories was a face, or rather parts of it. The parts that are the first to be devoured as a body rejoins the dirt it came from. Those familiar soulful eyes, that wide grin full of joy as your respective gazes met and they remembered those nine perfect years you spent together.
You'd watched over him from eight weeks to almost ten years only for a car to take him from you in one tire-screech-split-second. You may have lived next door to the house that eats memories but you still found yourself gradually forgetting his face, the way he yelled at strangers, the way he liked to hide plastic bottles behind the sofa.
When you saw the parts of his face that the house had latched onto most you ran to meet him, hoping against hope that somewhere, in some room, he might be whole and he might be your little boy again but that wasn't how the house worked.
As soon as you'd smashed the small window on the back door to unlatch it, you felt the air turn colder and your mind grow heavier, number as the house feasted on your life. By the time you made it to the kitchen you heard the polite cough of your uncle who killed himself thirty years ago.
He looked just like the day you found him, head opened up like a ripe watermelon and clutching a note that only said "forgive her". His reappearance was accompanied by the sound of paws against concrete as your little boy paced around, now snarling like he used to whenever he saw your ex.
Perhaps he knew you were the one driving the car that hit him.
Your uncle's hand lingered on the back door,waiting to let those heartbroken eyes and dripping jaws in.
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