I spent most of my summers at my sister’s house. The morning light pouring through the windows always seemed brighter than the sun itself. Everything there glowed with that kind of warmth I have never been able to explain. Even the cup of milk waiting for me each morning felt different. it reminded me that I was still a child. even though I never dared to drink it in the place I called “home.”
Everything there felt like a movie scene. suspended somewhere between memory and dream. Nothing seemed entirely real, and yet it felt more real than anything I had ever known. The colors of the rooms, the softness in the air, the quiet peace that settled over everything. It was the kind of warmth you never notice while you’re living inside it, only after you’ve left and spend years trying to find your way back. Little me always felt like an odd thing, shaped by hands I could not see. Maybe it was how home grew dark when night came. Maybe it was the voices that lingered beyond closed doors while I lay awake, listening to sounds I was too young to understand. Maybe it was the sudden changes that arrived without warning, rearranging the world before I had learned how to hold on to it. Maybe it was how my brother became the closest thing I knew to a father, and how my sister carried the tenderness of a mother without ever being asked to. Or maybe it was how my father never quite knew me, except in the moments when I remembered to be a child. Still, when I think of those summers, I remember the light. I remember the colors. I remember the cup of milk resting quietly on the table. And somewhere inside those early mornings, i knew what loneliness was and felt it under my skin, couldn’t call it a name yet. I learned how strange a home could feel, i knew something inside of me had begun to change. But i was the little girl who still believed that warmth would last forever.
