Let me tell you this, experience what I took from myself years ago. Allow me to walk down the backroads of my mind, and let every story ring true as best it can. Let my cup overflow with animosity and regret.
Hear me, about 51223
In a newly developed neighborhood, rows of vacant houses line the walkways down the street. The sky is a color not far off from the dirty snow of Georgia, or the eyes of a blind man. The houses themselves are tidy, neat , and respectable. Yet they sit unsold and empty, waiting for a properly lit family to pass through their threshold. However, its been years and they're still standing around, unchanged and unbroken.
There sits a building, down Bleaker Ave.
"51223" is the number painted on the address label strapped on the weathered mailbox. Tattered is the structure, built from wood covered with holes and flaking paint. The roof, with tiles poking out in all directions, shows little effort in conforming to the shapely standards of the adjacent houses. Grass peaks out from the pavement that leads onto the spacious driveway, instead of on the lawn which has no life to speak of.
The plaque that sits out front the property is the for sale sign —common on every house in the complex—with a bright yellow "sold" sticker slapped across it.
Bleaker Avenue was special, it was home to a couple of these houses, worn and dilapidated.
All were sold, because people live here, on Bleaker avenue.
I wonder why they do, with so many perfectly empty ones waiting to be filled with the joy of company.
Perhaps it's the mere presence of people that gives the aptly named street such characteristic looking houses. It's as if they poison it somehow.
Ive never talked to the people inside, I mean I've been here countless times on Bleaker, but have never had the courage to knock on 51223.
An interesting thing on that house is that it's the first one built. Built to be moved into immediately, by a family that needed to get away from it all. The whole complex started from the very spot im standing now. Before it was empty and now it's... this.
My hands grip the photo I have stuffed deep in my pocket, tracing the edges over and over again.
I took it at a time when all that was here was tall ferns and wildflowers. Not the presence of a darkened doorway or of rotten wood.
Tough as it is to say that I miss it, I certainly do. Almost as much as I miss the memory of the hole that it left in its absence, for now new things have filled that which I had hoped to keep vacant, waiting for those times again.
The hole is gone, stuffed full with houses and streets, and broken promises, and lucky pennies, and heartache.
I wish it had stayed longer, that I had been strong enough to keep the new things out.
I wish it had never developed, that the picture could have remained unchanged and perfect forever, always an example of the current year instead of a memory.
The photo buckles under the weight of my fingers, pressing and crimping it into a ball.
Withdrawing it from my pocket, I put into the mailbox of 51223, because I can no longer carry it.
I don't know what happened to it after that, and to be honest, I do care.
I want to know if he ever came out.
Ever opened the mailbox.
Ever saw the photo.
If he cried and wept like I had, over things we both had cherished.
I will never..know.
And it's never going to be the same again.
Because going back isn't an option
We can only move forward.
