Emerson Street W.
I can only remember how it looked in the dark.
While three lamp posts hoard their light, one sputters onto the cramped paralleled lines of cars that tightly border the crooked, and all too narrow street. The yellow light faintly glistens between the houses that are enveloped in shadows. The moon shines over tree roots that have breached the cracked sidewalk as the neighborhood cat, nicknamed Grave Digger, precociously licks his socked left paw on sidewalk outside house 229. Then-- darkness swallows everything up and the street stands dressed in black.
Those lampposts, so unfaithful.
Usually—the fog hangs low about the overgrown tree branches, the stars never show up for their night shift and I could swear that rain falls more on this street than anywhere else.
There are 23 houses and 3 apartment buildings on Emerson Street W. Each more reclusive than the next, all hiding behind their choice of camouflage and fencing.
There was even a rumor that house 216 was haunted. The doors were bolted shut and windows all boarded with planks of—weirdly enough—birch wood. No one knew when it was deserted, maybe no one ever lived there. You said you tried to break in once with only a lit candlestick as company; As you slipped through the basement window You slipped into your lucid imagination.
You swore you heard laughing down the hall or tap dancing on the creaking floorboards or maybe you heard nothing at all— maybe silence just tricked your ears.
I can't remember.
Regardless, you ran all the way home.
You told me that story two months after we spoke for the first time over coffee. I admitted to you I never knew there was a haunted house on our street. I didn't think haunted houses existed outside of Halloween. I didn’t even believe in ghosts--until I met you.
You lived in a house tangled in vines and hidden by leaves. I lived in a brown brick apartment complex on the other side.
There were 76 steps between our front doors—now there are 12,291.
My favorite tree ever is the one that steals the sun from your front porch; it must be over 50 years old. Its home to the garden spiders that make me itch with fear and the grey squirrels that scavenge your trash before its collected on Tuesdays at 7 AM. His green leaves turn fire red in late September and weeks before Mother Nature raises the tulips from their wintery grave she gives life to these big, beautiful, white flowers on his branches--they make him look so proud.
His branches somehow always end up on the couch on the front porch; leaving his muddy fingerprints on its cushions. I never understood why he put them there, I just assumed that it must be hard to stand so tall day after day and he just wanted to take a break--or just break, for that matter.
I loved that old couch and its blue striped pillows stained with mildew from the rain that stood on your porch. I sat on its damp cushions once before I knew you, when you were just a name and a face. We were strangers. I puffed on what I swore to be my last cigarette on that couch; I pledged 23 times all together to stop before I meant it.
As our story goes and as I remember it, our paths crossed right before my 21st oath—you were with me for the last two promises, I even put my hand over my heart to prove my seriousness.
You cried when you found out I lied. I stopped the next day.
Before that, but after the shy glances from across the street, the timid waves and cryptic small talk, something happened—something fell into place.
We weren’t fated. There was no destiny or even kismet, for that matter. We weren’t coincidence or at the hand of Cupid or Lady Luck. There was no serendipity or meddling of gods or aligning of stars.
We were mathematics. We were a formula. We were two numbers, which if added, only have one outcome.
We could never be anything else. We could only be something else if we never were added- but we were added.
And we were added on Emerson Street W under a sputtering lamp post.
