Your porch was always home.

Your porch was always home. The week before last, you let your cat out and he rubbed his body against the tires of my car, looking for a friend. That Saturday, rain drenched us in confetti as we locked lips underneath the streetlight that lit up your driveway in a brilliant display of black and green. That was the porch that I stood on, with each foot on a different set of steps, to knock on your front door for the first time and meet your mother, who likes computer games and Family Feud, for the first time.

But now, as I hear the door slam behind me, the sound echoing down the street, all I want to do is run deeper into the dark until it swallows me whole and spits out my bones.