My Home Still Exists The Way It Was, Somewhere.

A mansion.

In this dream, I am cleaning a mansion.

It’s my old home, the old road.

I’m vacuuming the hallway to my childhood room. The house is empty, the world is abandoned, I’m roads and roads away, just the way I used to dream of this house when I lived here..

The bathroom is the same, but quieter.

The sun is peeking through the window of my bedroom, where the bunk bed sits, untouched for years.

I vacuum up the carpeted stairs to my mum’s room. Her dark purple, green, and blue blanket, coloured as diamonds, politely made, long left. It still smells like her; the blinds are closed, I wonder what thoughts she left behind here.

We all grew up, and everyone forgot, and yet I am here; everything is the same as we left it.

I step out to the deck, I know I should be cleaning, but I’m so curious.

The trampoline still sits there, I see the open fields beyond it, and I am so lonesomely aware of how this feels like a dream, the dreamlike emptiness. I don’t think I could hear my voice if I tried to speak. Instead I move my way through the house, past the porch, the brightness of memory drained here. it’s just an empty, dusty, three story home. I go to the basement, I vacuum, but I stop to look at the sewing machine at the back, the dog harnesses still hanging, untouched in the dark grey glow. How long has it been?

I touch the piano I used to play, but nobody can hear it. I look out the basement window to my right, where it had flooded once, but that doesn’t exist here.

I move, back up the stairs, non existent, the light streaming through the windows, the evening of a dream, I go to the kitchen. I realize that the time is running out, and there are cookies smashed all over the floor.

I open the pantry door and painfully examine the molasses container I’d known from years ago. I’m unsure what to do or feel. I vacuum up the cookies. The fridge is black just how I remembered. The magnets haven’t moved, a card is slanted as if it almost fell, but never did.

Then a young man walks in, with dark brown skin. He doesn’t seem to notice me much at all, doesn’t make eye contact, says, “you can pack up and violate the exit.”

I’m unsure why he says this or why it makes sense.

I say, “I didn't finish.”

And he says, “it’s okay, I just wanted you to see the place first.”

We stand eye to eye at the kitchen island, and I say, “you know, I used to live here?”

He doesn’t seem like he’s listening that intently but he says, “really?”

I don’t recognize the lack of human, breath, and life until he is in the room, and I suddenly want him to understand this more than anything because I know the road away from here is very long, dream long.

“I grew up here.”

We talk for a long time, the sun melts on us through the open kitchen window, and I look outside to the abandoned dog yard, I look at the trees, and I’m unsure of where I exist after this.

He says, “you can stay with me here.”