Journey of Mem: A coming of age fairytale about a girl and her monster.

By Paulina Vallin and Yvette Gilbert

With loneliness as her closest companion, Mem feels as if there's a Beyondness calling for her . . . in the flickering of a candle, in the swift caress of the wind, in the swaying of the elm tree in the sch

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paulina Vallin
• Release date: Mar 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736755525

Paulina Vallin

Paulina Vallin is a Los Angeles-based author and screenwriter who originally hails from Sweden and Finland. As a child, Paulina won writing competitions with her often thought-provoking stories, but it wasn't until she landed her first screenwriting gig in 2015 that she decided to make it into a career. Journey of Mem is a work of love and her first novel. When she's not writing, Paulina can be found teaching dance through her own dance company, acting, and making music.

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Journey of Mem

By

Paulina Vallin

Copyright © 2021 Paulina Vallin

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brand, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

All rights reserved. Copyright ® 2021

ISBN: 978-1-7367555-2-5

Illustrations by Yvette Gilbert

Instagram: yvettegilbert_art

Interior design by Vila Design

To Ed, my guardian angel.

And to Mummo, whose light lives on in my heart.

For all the travelers, searching for a place they cannot name.

And for all the aching souls, trying to escape their own monsters.

1

o

Mem and the Unnameable

M em wiped a wet lock from her eyes and focused on the dark autumn sky. She could have sworn there had been a face in the clouds. It had smiled coyly at her, as if teasing her to come catch it, and because Mem wasn’t one to turn down a challenge, she had climbed high up into the tallest elm in the schoolyard to get a better look. Big cold drops of rain dribbled down her face and into her mouth. Mem’s usual mane of platinum blonde curls clung like flypaper around her face, and her soaked loose-cut dress now felt more like a bodysuit around her modestly budding curves. She felt her head spin as she looked down to where her terrified classmates stood clinging to each other. They were shouting at her, but Mem couldn’t hear them due to the pounding of her racing heart. She was probably almost thirty feet above the ground—higher than she usually climbed—and the pelting rain hit her in the back as if trying to push her off the branch. Just wait , Mem thought competitively. I’m not scared . The insides of her thighs were starting to ache from hugging the tree branch on which she was sitting, but soon the fear and pain would be over. Soon she’d fly out of this place on a gust of cold autumn air.

Besides, Mem was used to pain.

She’d had an aching spot in her stomach for as long as she could remember, accompanied by a crying voice that sometimes sounded like her own voice, and other times seemed to belong to someone else altogether. It would sound in times of doubt and challenge to blur her thoughts with its high-pitched crying. It had been louder since her mother had been taken away. Much louder. In an effort to manage the pain, she had come up with an image of a little monster living inside her belly, dragging long yellow nails along the rosy walls of her stomach. Once, she had made a drawing of it in class. The image had portrayed the inside view of a torso with a hairy little beast inside of it. Its mouth was wide-open in a scream while trying to claw itself out of its prison. Mem’s own little monster inside.

The principal had invited Mem and her father to the school psychologist’s office. Again. When they had asked Mem what the picture meant, she had simply shrugged. They wouldn’t understand. What would she answer anyway? That the monster cried about deep longing for something beyond the mundane reality? Something that Mem called Beyondness. The quest for this Beyondness had lured Mem into staying too long underwater, holding her hand too long over a fire and getting lost in the woods while pursuing the end of a rainbow. Her mother’s old umbrella had become famous among the neighbors as she ran down hill after hill on windy days, hoping to be swept away. Chosen. And she couldn’t count the number of times she had climbed the school elm, waiting for the right moment to jump. If the signs were right, she knew it would work. There had to be the right level of magic in the air and that could only be felt.

Right now was that moment. The face in the clouds seemed to promise answers of magic. Answers that would confirm her somehow being special, not just weird, as the other kids always called her.

She’s going to jump! And from all the way up there!

The shrill voice made Mem snap her head around a little too fast and she lost her balance. The kids below screamed as Mem threw her arms around her supporting branch to regain her grip. Her body trembled with adrenaline as she felt the rough bark against her skin. Peering up through her wet curtain of hair, she saw that the face in the clouds was still watching her. It had the same expression as her mother when she comforted Mem about not fitting in. Dad always teased Mem about having better conversations with trees rather than people because they didn’t answer back. But her mother always understood that Mem spoke with trees because they in fact did answer back. She never had judged Mem.

Mem’s pulse calmed at the thought of her mother and she sat up straight. This was the magical moment she had waited for. She could not meet it with fear. The signs were right. The magic was tangible. The rain. The small glimmer of sun peeking through the lips of the sun-face. Mem could hear birdsong right next to her ear. She turned to see a couple of blackbirds sitting on the wet dripping branch next to her. One was much smaller than the other. Maybe a mother and daughter, she thought. They kept staring at her, almost impatiently. Mem felt a tingle of excitement in the pit of her stomach. This was definitely not a coincidence!

Far below, a couple of worried teachers pushed through the crowd. Among them was Mem’s favorite, Mrs. Tuula, the only one who didn’t look at her with that godforsaken half-bewildered-half-frightened smile. The rain had already flattened her usually puffy perm into a little brown helmet around her head. Mem! Her voice drifted up through the pelting rain. Come down immediately. You’ll get yourself killed one of these days!

Mem inched her way farther out onto the branch, where the leaves would conceal her a bit from prying eyes. The attention was not only dangerously distracting but also uncomfortable in general. Most of the time, Mem just wished to be left alone, not because she really wanted to be alone but because company tended to make her lonelier.

The clouds scudded by, unaffected by Mem’s desires to simply fly away and leave the gawking crowd below. She knew she should just stick to the usual routine and climb down to give up her chase for Beyondness, but one question always remained: What if this were the moment she could prove them all wrong? That there is magic for those who need it the most, and that Mem, though poor and abandoned by her mother, was special enough to obtain it.

What if . . .

Mem! Come down! Mrs. Tuula persisted. You’re breaking your father’s heart with this behavior. He’s already lost enough.

Mem felt a stab in her stomach. Why did she have to add that? And why couldn’t they just let her be? Their constant disruptions kept smothering the magic, and she would have to wait for the next moment to come sneaking by.

Mem kept her eyes up where, through the dripping leaves, she could still see bits and pieces of the crying sky.

Her heart jumped. Did the face in the cloud nod a yes? Mem’s hand shot to her satchel and unhooked a black umbrella that had been hanging from the shoulder strap. The children beneath her squealed, and Mrs. Tuula yelled, Oh no! She’s going to do it!

One of the pudgier male teachers dropped his umbrella and attempted an awkward leap onto the lowest tree branch. He immediately slid back down to the ground.

Mem ignored the ruckus. They would not deter her efforts this time. She had to make this work, or the monster in her belly would never let up on her. The little birds tweeted as if agreeing with her. So, with quivering knees, she stood up and held on to the rough trunk for support. The soles of her homemade leather shoes were soft and allowed her feet to hug the branch underneath her. She popped open her umbrella and waited for the next gust of chilly autumn wind. Fly me to wherever I need to go, she whispered. And with her eyes on the face in the clouds, in the name of magic and wonders, she stepped out into the open air.

Welcome to Reality

Look at you lying so still in the grass.

It’s time for that childhood believing to pass.

You hoped you were special, meant for big things?

That there was meaning to your oddness: magic signs and girls with wings?

Oh silly, silly girl, those dreams must reach an end.

It’s time we made acquaintance; it’s clear you need a friend.

So, welcome to reality; I’ll show the way, my dear.

I’m here to help you harden; I will cure your hopes with fear.

People can’t fly. Dreams are for sleeping.

So wake up, little Mem; it’s for you that I’m weeping.

Wake up!

2

o

The Change

Wake up.

Wake up.

Mem sat up in bed with a start. Who’s there? she croaked, her voice raspy from sleep.

No one answered. It was quiet in her room and quiet down the hall. An expected thing for being in the middle of the night. But as she had balanced on the border between sleeping and waking, she had distinctly heard a raspy—almost childlike— voice. Not just in her dreams but right by her face. She could still feel the warmth of a breath lingering around her ear.

Too uneasy to stay resting, Mem threw her legs over the edge of the bed but immediately winced with a pain in her lower back and her right shoulder. She had fallen quite hard on her side. She rubbed her pale arms and the sight of the dark bruises—there like splashes of ink on the brightest white paper—made her grimace with disappointment. She had failed. With all the perfect signs and magic, she had proved herself to be delusional.

She had never actually jumped before. Not only because the teachers always got to her before she could, and not because the fear of hurting herself, but because of a fear greater than that: that it wouldn’t work. In an effort to clamp on to the possibility of magic, she had decided to linger in the unknown, between the dreaming and action, so not to find out if she was wrong. Well, she had been. Mortifyingly wrong.

Her body tensed in anticipation of the crying monster inside. Its cries would be overwhelming now with such a failure to give it air!

Long minutes ticked by. The voice didn’t come. Instead, it was surprisingly quiet inside. She felt her stomach. The only sound in there was the churning of hunger. The lack of pain didn’t instill any calm. Quite the contrary. In fact, it felt like the quiet before a storm.

Mem struggled to her feet and limped over to her bedroom window. There she watched the wind make its wild turns through the tree crowns. A million flirting stars met her sad gaze. Everything hurt, but it was a beautiful night. The weather had changed abruptly. The wind’s calm breath had switched into a tight-lipped whistling, and the Maiden of Frost had left her icy white footprints across the fields and streets, as a gentle tease of the snow that was to come. It was late this year. Her mother had always said that the Maiden of Frost cannot be rushed. She lays her naked white form over the land when the work of autumn is finished and the earth is ready for rest. There was closure in snow. It allowed a person to slow down and meditate, awaiting the new to come. Mem loved when her mother told stories about nature in theses personified ways. They made sense to her.

Mem sighed heavily. This year, the Maiden of Frost obviously was not ready to give that closure. She was restlessly tapping the ground with her feet instead of falling into her slumber. Because Mem’s mother was not here anymore, the world no longer made sense. Even to the Maiden of Frost.

Mem’s attention went to two little birds flying back and forth in front of her window. They were the same kind of blackbirds she had seen in the elm tree before jumping. She followed them curiously with her gaze, since birds were usually not awake at this time of night. As if sensing they had caught her attention, the birds now flew to sit on the old iron gate that stood fenceless between the yard and the dark borders of the forest. Mem’s eyes widened. The gate had opened a crack. How strange, she thought. It had been rusted shut for as long as she could remember. The first owner of the cabin had kept cattle, and although her father had torn down the fence, he had left the gate. Your mom likes the look of it, he had shrugged. Now it was open, as if someone had just stepped through it.

Stomachache again?

Mem jumped. She hadn’t noticed her father standing in the doorway. He was awake after all. She was just about to ask him about the gate when he sighed and said, Mem, we have to talk. He walked up to her and the old floor whined under his weight, even though he was almost as thin as Mem. His movements were slow and tired. Immediately, Mem was struck with a feeling of guilt. Ms. Tuula had been right. Her father didn’t need more burdens to worry about. He had lost enough. Gently, he grazed a bruise on her forearm and pursed his lips, the way he always did when silently displeased.

You scared me this time. His eyes traveled to the mangled umbrella lying on the floor. It’s a miracle you didn’t break anything. Truly a miracle.

Mem lowered her gaze. She knew that her bruises hurt her father much more than they hurt her. Looking Beyond certainly had its price. She had lost herself on many endeavors before, but she had never gone through with something to this level. Were you leaving again? her father asked, well accustomed to luring his daughter down from the elm in the schoolyard if the teachers had failed to do so.

Not leaving. Just going looking a little, Mem whispered, suddenly feeling a sting of irritation mingled with the guilt. This constant interference. At the same time, she didn’t want to reject her father’s attempts to converse. He was usually a man of few words, so when he spoke it really mattered.

Going looking, huh? her father sighed. He searched her face with his watery gray eyes as if he’d find an answer there. Mem thought she saw the shape of her mother’s face reflected in the black of his pupils. He smiled it away and kept talking in longer breaths. "I remember when you sat on the couch with bleeding knees after another of your fights with gravity. You had packed a suitcase that was bigger than you. And that umbrella. You were six years old and you told me that you had to leave. And why? Because you had heard the neighbor kids talk about fantastical things, and you suspected that you, little Mem, were an extraterrestrial being. That’s exactly the term you used."

Mem couldn’t help but smile. She remembered that day. "You told me to say it in alien, and I made all kinds of sounds while you accompanied me with your violin, holding it upside down."

Her father leaned in a little closer. And then I asked you something. Do you remember?

Mem started playing with the sleeves of her nightgown. Yes, she answered, trying to swallow down the lump in her throat. "You asked me to give this world a chance." She heard her voice break and she pressed her mouth shut.

She had indeed tried to give this world a chance! As if learning a foreign language, she had practiced in the bathroom mirror. Long conversations on subjects she heard the other children chat about. She laughed when she saw others laugh. She said mm-hmm and aha when it seemed fitting. Day after day, she stared into the face of normal, trying to get used to its features. Mem had learned to play the game of normal pretty well, but the signs of something out there, waiting for her, did not go away. Sometimes she would let her real self slip through. The few kids she’d engage with would laugh amiably at her burning desire to fly, but in their laugh, Mem could hear a few disharmonious notes and that always hurt her. She had very early accepted her title as weird and she didn’t mind. Weird was often used for the things Mem liked the most. In weird there was an expanse of mystery and untamed potential for surprise.

There was a time when Mem had cried about the so-called weirdness of her looks, but her mother had—with a gentle hold of her shoulders—kept Mem facing her own image in the mirror until Mem would agree to say she looked beautiful. Different, but beautiful, even though her skin was indeed paler than new-fallen snow, her eyes, an almost transparent gray. Her hair flew around her head in a wild orbit of unruly locks, even whiter than her skin. But other than when others commented on her unusual looks—saying she looked like a ghost, an old person, a lab rat, and so on—Mem hardly ever thought of her own appearance. She was always busy looking for the Beyondness that would take her to where she belonged.

Her father now took Mem’s face in his hands. They felt rough against her cheeks, but the utter gentleness of his touch made up for it. Listen. You are a beautiful girl with an ancient mind in constant bloom. But please, my only daughter, no more flying. No matter what is calling you.

Mem pressed her lips together as hard as she could. It was getting difficult to hold in the tears. At her father’s unwavering stare, she finally nodded.

Her father’s posture relaxed and he pointed at her stomach. Does it still hurt?

No, Mem said and assumed a braver posture.

Mem, her father said softly. Why don’t you write Mom a letter? Even if you don’t send it. The paper lies on the table downstairs. It’s starting to collect dust.

Mem felt her nails dig into her palms as she clenched her fists. She knew where the paper was! She could feel its presence where it lay on the coffee table downstairs at all times, asking her to let go of her mother. Never. Just. Simply. Never.

The silence between father and daughter buzzed with unexpressed feelings. Mem waited for the usual hasty exit that followed moments like this, but instead her father picked up an unfamiliar book from the small red table near the door. He must’ve brought it in with him and set it aside while talking to her. He held the book in his hands for a moment, as gently as if holding a newborn. For a moment his face twisted into a mask of indecision, but finally he held out the book to her, his hand trembling.

He cleared his throat. I think you should have this. It’s— he was struggling to get the words out. It’s your mother’s.

Mem looked at the untitled leather cover with butterflies of expectation crowding her chest. It looked expensive. The kind of notebook she had seen rich people write in. However, she didn’t take it. Something told her this was more than a book. It was a portal to something that would change her life. What does it say? Her voice was a mere whisper.

Her father smiled sadly. It was the saddest smile she had ever seen. As sad as she felt right now. I don’t know. But I thought it might help you. To process. To accept.

Sadness changed to hot anger. Accept. This word made Mem want to turn away and refuse the book! But her longing to be near her mother, even just through the ink on a paper, won and she took the book from her father.

As if the maximum amount of communication had finally been reached, her father dropped his shoulders and exhaled. And what will you dream of tonight? Their ancient good-night routine.

Mem’s fists relaxed. He so badly wanted everything to be all right. So she answered, Happy fuzzy things, chocolate strawberries and love.

Her father nodded approvingly and shot a last glance at the book on his way out of the room. The creaking floor sounded fainter as he walked away. Mem stood there, mystery book in hand, doing everything not to scream that chocolate-dipped strawberries and fuzzy happy things were never in her dreams! If it wasn’t her returning nightmares of being suffocated to death in an avalanche, it was painful memories of the day her mother had left that haunted her in her sleep.

Mother’s blonde locks swaying back and forth over her face as she kneads dough by the kitchen counter. Unintelligible words coming out of her mouth in little defensive waves, as if answering an invisible someone standing right next to her. Her hazel gaze transfixed on something outside the window, something far up in the sky. Thin streams of blood running from her wrists, creating red streaks in the dough as she just kept kneading and kneading. Father’s panicked voice. Two men in solid-colored clothes—were they blue?—giving Mother bracelets of gauze on the kitchen floor. Her strawberry mouth whispering to Father, He’s taking me. I’m so sorry.

Father turning decades older in just that very instance. Just for a while, my flower. Just for a while.

Mother shaking her head. She doesn’t mean the men in the blue clothes who lifts her off the floor. She means somebody or something beyond that. Someone nobody can see. Father doesn’t understand, but Mem somehow does. She does. There’s somebody else. Somebody outside the window, or beside her. Somebody Beyond.

Mother’s lavender scarf on the table and the dough still on the counter, with red stains turned brown now. Mem’s own tearless face in the reflection of the window, standing by the counter, looking outside to where Mother’s eyes had been glued, trying to see what Mother had seen. The wind whining promises of magic answers and Beyondness. Don’t cry, Mem. Search. Search for a better answer.

Mem shook her head to rid her thoughts and sat down on her bed with the book in her lap. Her hand trembled as she dragged her fingers across the cold leather. Her pulse was pounding in her ears. The avalanche would swallow her soon. Mem opened the book to a random page. A faint scent of lavender stroked her face. Mother’s scent. Her pulse immediately lowered. The avalanche paused.

Mem felt a tender warmth in her chest as she realized that it was a journal. Her mother’s thoughts materialized on paper. Something that had always been so out of reach was now very tangible. Black on white.

There were a meager number of entries, but the pages carried her mother’s wild-stroked handwriting. Mem skimmed over the pages. Her eyes teared at the familiar curves of the letters, the constantly varying S and the oversized G.

Mem took a deep breath and flipped back to the first page. It was a poem titled, The Kingdom of Jag.

The Kingdom of Jag, Mem whispered and immediately felt her hair stand on her arms. It was something about just saying those words that made the warmth in her chest tingle even warmer. She read the poem:

Beyond the sunset hides a kingdom of peace, a kingdom where the haunted belong.

On a path of moonlight I will the moment seize, and follow the blackbird’s song.

From the herd of sheep the black one will bleat, finally knowing its path.

An uncrowned queen will her subjects greet, finding her home at last.

Mem looked up from the page. She closed the book and the whiff of lavender swept over her again. The Kingdom of Jag, she whispered, lowering the journal onto her lap.

There was something familiar about that name.

Could it have to do with Beyondness? Had her mother had the same calling? Her mother had always been very vague about her background. But everyone who knew her said she carried herself with such royal grace. Was this why? Because she was from a kingdom? Mem might as well have written those words herself. She understood all about feeling a Beyond that was behind the sunset, a place where the haunted belong. Suddenly, she realized the avalanche that was usually about to drown her had retreated completely. Her pulse was still a little loud, but instead of panic it beat with passion, with hope and emotion. It held the drowning at bay.

Mem stood up and walked to the window again. The moon was casting a walkway of light behind the rusty old gate. The blackbirds were still sitting there, staring in her direction. Suddenly a tingling feeling of realization made her breath stick in her throat. Her mother’s poem: On a path of moonlight I will the moment seize, and follow the blackbird’s song. This could be no coincidence! The open gate that supposedly couldn’t be opened. The birds singing so strangely in the middle of night. The moon-path. The journal.

She had just about finished that thought as she noticed a small creature move in the shadows on the other side of the gate. It wasn’t bigger than a rat, but it moved on two feet and its tiny little arms were . . . waving at her? Mem backed up a step. She should probably call for her father. This must be her wild imagination moving toward insanity.

But she didn’t call for her father. Something about this little shadow person in the garden didn’t scare her. Instead, she felt an immediate irresistible urge to run outside.

The birds now flew up to sit on the broken lamp on top of the gate. The lamp had been there to scare off wolves, her father had explained, but it had been broken for years. For a second, a soft light flickered to life inside the crushed light bulb. Mem’s eyelids fluttered along with the surprised wing-flaps of the birds as they flew off the lamp. Only when the little creature disappeared behind a bush did Mem feel fear. Not because of what was happening, but fear that the creature would leave. This was the first real sign that something was indeed calling her and danger didn’t seem half as threatening as the daily despair she felt.

There was no question. Her body had already started to move before she made the decision. She would have to go outside. And she wouldn’t come back for a long time.

3

o

The Broken Promise

Mem snuck down the stairs to the living room, careful not to bump her satchel into anything and wake her father up. Her father had made it for her from a blue coarse textile and added a brown leather strap that fit perfectly across Mem’s chest. Usually it contained schoolbooks, but now it carried bread and fruit for the road, and of course, her mother’s journal. The moon lit a path from the stairs right up to the front door as if confirming this was the way she should go.

On the coffee table laid that godforsaken blank piece of paper. Next to it, a family portrait from a few summers ago when things had been different. Mem walked up to the table, eyes on her mother’s healthy face in the picture, smiling ear to ear, always unable to contain her black-and-white emotions. Behind her was the frothy ocean and the little cabin they had rented that summer. On each side of her, Mem and her father smiled just as widely.

Then the pale white paper below the picture. An ant was walking across it.

Writing the letter would confirm that she was gone.

Not wanting to touch the dusty paper that had haunted the table for so long, she grabbed another one and wrote: Dad. I’m going to bring Mom back. So your music can sound lighter again. And I’ll find you the best violin in the world so YOU can play at the court and be happy. I’m not leaving. Just going looking a little. After signing her name, she paused and stared at the moonlit path to the front door.

She had promised her father she wouldn’t fly away, but—

"He never said anything about walking," she whispered to herself.

c

Outside the cabin, Mem could see through her father’s window. If she never saw him again, this was the image she’d want to preserve forever: her father sitting in the orange light from the fire that was doing its best to warm the cold room. She knew the sound of his chair as it creaked at his every weight shift. It was made from scrap wood by her father’s hands, old and worn but loyally upholding its task of being a chair.

His hardened fingertips touched the strings of the violin with utter gentleness. His eyes were half-open, as if literally seeing the flying notes and giving them his mildest gaze. The corners of his mouth were turned slightly upward, as if there were a shared secret between him and the music. Mem had seen her father move the most apathetic of souls with his music. It opened their hearts and for a moment, allowed them to stand eye to eye with their true selves. This was how Mem’s mother had spoken about his music and what she had loved about him the most. He had offered her moments of clarity in her otherwise very muddled view of herself. This silent practical man had such poetry inside. Sometimes Mem wished he could share some of that poetry with her in time spent together, not just through his music.

Suddenly her father dropped his bow and coughed fiercely. Mem cramped up. He had turned so fragile. His breath, so wheezy. His body, so thin. As if he were about to fade away. She couldn’t lose him too.

Mem decided in that moment that her father was going to have the happiness he deserved. She would bring him riches from the kingdom and he would have recognition. Most importantly, she would bring her mother back from where she really was. The Kingdom of Jag.

They would be happy again.

She turned to the old gate and her heart jumped. The light flickered to life again and this time it stayed shining. It was clearly a welcome. I hear you, Mem whispered and made her way across the yard and the strip of field that lay between her house and the gate. Her heart beat with slow determined beats. What was she going to find after walking through the old gate? She could handle anything except for nothing. Once she stood in front of the gate, she placed a hand on its cold metal. A strange chill went up her spine. Tweet, tweet, the couple of blackbirds sang on the lamp above her. They were still watching her, encouraging her. The gate was already open. The light was on. The turf of grass looked the same on the other side of the gate, but she knew something would be different. Her eyes found the little creature again. It was waiting for her in the shadows by a tree. She wasn’t scared, not even as her eyes detected a thin tail hanging behind it.

It’s about time, the creature whispered with the same hoarse, yet childlike, voice that had woken her up that night. The same voice that used to cry inside of her had materialized into a creature now, a creature sent to guide her to wherever her mother was, she hoped. In that case, all the pain it had brought would be worth it.

Mem took a deep breath, held it and walked through the gate.

Goodbye

Goodbye, house, every corner, every crease.

So long, faded stairs, where I’ve sat dreaming in peace.

See you later, little birdhouse we built last spring.

Did I ever thank you, birds, for how sweetly you sing?

I’ll never forget you, little apple tree,

my fifth birthday present, from Mother to me.

Don’t be sad, good ol’ bike, soon covered in snow.

I’m sure Father will mend you when the spring flowers show.

Be well, little pond, to whom I’ve told all my fears.

Your water, by now, must be salty with tears!

Thank you, for showing my face