THE FIRST MONTH

verity callahan

Dear John,

We live on Meadowlake Road, which has no meadow or lake. We. I keep skipping over that word, over the plurality of us two, as if we own these red-bricked apartments, these speedbumps and the stray calico that our neighbor Rhonda feeds.

Do you think we’ll ever forget the way light crackles through our bedroom window on weekend mornings, or Charlotte’s slick little black dog, the one that always comes to you first? Do you think we’ll forget the trees that we can hear only when it gets quiet? Those leaves always whispering about our new life. Our. I’m not used to that word, or the upstairs neighbors who are too loud when they play movies and laugh, startling us in the same way marriage somehow made us different despite thinking it would be an easy change.

When I ask your parents about their first apartment they can’t remember much. But I can’t forget how close we are to the gymnasium where I used to do somersaults as a kid, next to the kind of suburban hell I swore I’d never live in but now crave. I want to remember these mismatched kitchen chairs from the thrift store and the little lamp on our fridge.

I still feel strange that we sleep in my old bed, mostly because I’m still on the same side. You offered to move, and I don’t know why I got upset. Maybe you do. Us two. We are hidden at the end of the apartment complex, where they hide the ugly units. It’s the best part, you told me once, because we are next to the forest, or maybe it’s just someone’s backyard. Sometimes I wonder what those trees say to one another.

We. Are slowly getting used to how each other looks in the dark, in this strange dance we have in the morning when you make cereal and I struggle to make coffee the way my parents always did. I don’t know what to call the house I grew up in anymore. Home doesn’t seem to cut it, since Charlotte and Rhonda aren’t there. I can hear them laughing outside, smoking as they always do. I think they may wait for you to get back from work, too.