1st Place, Poetry, 2021 Literary Awards
the sidewalk under my feet seemed somehow harder than the concrete elsewhere under my soles, it felt like scraped knees waiting for the bus trick-or-treat gas station ice cream runs mindlessly, i found my way past the only square with gravel to the one peaked like mountains from the large oak tree’s roots that snaked their way beneath the path and broke through the top brown bark gripped the trunk that i stood next to for my first day photos that i fruitlessly tried to climb when the shade of the leaves was the only respite of summer i turned right onto the pathway to the house dirt covered the lawn where the shade forbade grass from growing two concrete steps up a mailbox to the left of the door the small stone house stood with a quiet yell on the busy street a house no one paid attention to but everyone could picture large windows were a screen into the daily comings and goings of our lives dinner and breakfast and staring out, waiting for friends to arrive the door was painted the same red, mom always painted our doors red, with tan accents like square frames on the wood i can picture the inside creaky, basketball court thin wood planks roughed up by decades of clambering children and heavy-footed dogs the rooms small enough to feel suffocating but big enough to hold memories old, stained carpet in the living room and a brick fireplace that we never lit a mantle with our photos or trophies or stockings and warped-glass windows on either side our oven was from the fifties and our table from great-grandma but the life in the house was new and bold teeth lost and inches gained a doggy door Ceili only started to use just weeks before we left and a cabinet so full of art we made that we could never quite shut it the bathroom fought over with bobby pins and zero counter space the area just outside the door where i stood on my sister’s feet and played penguin before brushing my teeth an old linen closet that was perfect for hide and seek and filled with quilts and comforters and towels and coats and smelled of mothballs and dryer sheets our unfinished basement that held more life than the entire upstairs and dad’s office back where we stored old clothes and school supplies in the backyard we had a hot tub (but never a trampoline) and a patio set that was loved for too many years and forests with fallen tree trunks that we called our dragons by the tree i planted in kindergarten, we found a deer skull and back by the firepit, baseballs would fly into our yard the backyard where our dog befriended a deer and where i learned to walk on pine needles barefoot where dad broke his finger taking our dog outside where we’d run into the snow after soaking in the jacuzzi the garage held the ufo box where we collected random objects and right next to the garage, our basketball hoop where i learned i am terrible at horse but as i walk back with them now, the new owners, to collect something sent to the wrong spot, i peek in the windows and the walls are a different color and the hot tub is gone and the trees that i climbed that woodpeckers loved, disappeared
Bridget Massey is a sociology major who likes to read and garden in her spare time. She finds inspiration for her poetry in nature. When not in class, Bridget likes to spend time with her dog and watch trashy reality tv.