All these roads, like veins. Coursing through the southern coast, of a state I spent so long saying wasn’t mine. When I returned to California, to the town of my childhood ghosts, I wondered if my presence would feel like regression. Would form change back into the 15 year old girl observing rather than participating, the 16 year old girl thinking a license would change her life, the 18 year old girl who wasn’t sure if she was speaking to her mom yet? 

Maybe after twenty years the ghosts of our past get tired of waiting. Or maybe they are forgotten like so many memories we displace. They were not waiting to greet me as my feet wandered between old paths and new. 

Then a drive, as I’m apt to do. Wandering the veins of Burbank, and before I can prepare myself it is here. A conduit to the past in the form of peach stucco and a tree that’s not there anymore. The house, in enough childhood pictures, that I’m not sure what I remember— the home or the pictures of it. 

And before I realize it, the tears block the vision of the house that is before me and all I can see are the memories. The feeling of being eight and learning pain erases our ownership of immortality. Seeing a lizard’s tail squirm, still seeming alive despite not being connected to its owner. Writing “I love Ricky”, but not really knowing why.

I wipe my eyes, not really sure why the tears are there. 
Just as quickly as it comes, the ghost recedes to find its place with all the others who have yet to surface. And I allow myself to move on, leaving some memories for another day.