Jasmyne Bredwell
The hallway light flickers like a pulse.
We drag the mattress in sideways, laughing,
breathless, your elbow knocks the doorframe—
a baptism.
The old house still clings to my socks:
A dust of dog hair, a thumbtack from the
poster I never took down, the smell of my mother’s
eucalyptus lotion rising from the cardboard box labeled as MISC.
You say, “This is ours now,”
and I nod, but I am still hearing the
creak of the hallway floor, still seeing the ghost
of my brother’s height chart, scratched into
the closet wall.
We eat takeout on the floor.
The pizza sauce spills, a dark bloom
on the lease. You kiss my wrist.
I think of the time I broke a window
and blamed the wind.
The radiator hisses like a snake
I once saw in the garden. I remember the way my
father used to whistle through his teeth
when he was angry.
We hang a mirror. It reflects the hallway,
The flicker, my face, your hands.
I don’t recognize the girl in the glass.
She’s wearing my mother’s eyes.
Outside, someone’s shouting.
Inside, we are quiet, our bodies curled
like quotation marks around a sentence
we haven’t said yet.
I dream of the spare room—
the box labeled, “Her Firsts,”
a baby tooth, a ribbon, a note I wrote to
no one. I wake to your breath on my shoulder, the window
open, the city humming a lullaby
I’m still learning the words to.