Childhood Dwellings • • • Isabella Paracca

A midcentury house on the lake. My long gone childhood bed with its bad dreams. Sand of zebra mussels of which I thought were beautiful. I didn’t know they hurt the lake, like many things, I only saw their wonder. Now I am begging for help; jaded by the dark sides of once-beautiful things. There was a magnolia in the back, but I never saw it bloom. My small stature couldn’t help put the dock in when springtime came around. Would I feel better if I walked through those doors again, or would it feel like the flood, washing the history away? The only thing I could have known about my life was the ominous depths of the water, scared of seaweed, scared of myself. The only time I ever felt tangibly real was when I was gazing up at the rocky mountains. A former self is buried there. Snow in summertime. Too small to understand the hatred hidden behind the kind peaks, of people who felt like home, but no longer. Now I only see the rotted flesh of what was. I don’t think I love them anymore. Blackbirds, horses, and cherry trees, a sacred image my mind loved. Tales of little girls making friends with the forest with a stomach full of soup I can no longer eat. No less a human but a god, she could have lived forever. Both mother and child have the same vision. What does that mean? Recurring dreams of grandma’s house, long gone. I feel so wrong. Archaic spaces with holes that I fall through. There is nothing sweet anymore. Now I just pretend to be in love just to feel something other than the grief and shame of being alive. Take me back to that state of being.