Plate Tectonics

I never liked undressing in Grandma’s spare room. The room with all of her Elvis stuff. If you had to change in a room with at least eighteen eyeballs looking at you, it’d freak you out, too. I don’t believe in ghosts, or anything. But I still shirk before the charming blue-eyed gaze of all those Elvises.

I sit at the top of the stairs. I used to slide down my stomach on these, when Pap wasn't looking. Same Fisher Price toys in the basement. The pretty purple-dressed princess, the three legged dog, the fat little firemen.

How did they preserve these things for so long? And in such good condition, too. Except for the one with the chew marks. What the hell was going on there?

It's weird- walking around in a house that you used to live in, when you were a kid.

I gather the toys and put them back in their bin. I walk back up the stairs. I avoid the creepy Elvis room. I pull the front door shut, softly. My ring grazes the doorknob. It feels like plate tectonics, those two metals shifting against each other.

I step onto the splintered old porch. My car stares at me in the driveway.

It’s not that I wanted to turn around and start walking into the back yard. It's not that I particularly wanted to climb the ladder into the tree house. I was compelled to.

You can see over the trees from here. The sky is purple and red and setting. I grab the fireman’s pole that extends to the ground. I let gravity do the rest. My hair swishes, my body whirls. My ring goes for the ride.