Where the Fence Used to Be

I park a block away. The house is already half-gone, its metallic bones jutting into the overcast sky like the ribs of something ancient and long-dead. There’s yellow caution tape flapping in the wind, a warning sign half-buried in a mound of dirt, and the thick, unfamiliar smell of turned earth and disturbed memory. But no one stops me as I duck under the tape and walk toward the yard. No one ever does, anymore.

The grass is taller than I remember. It sways like a slow ocean, unruly and whispering, brushing against my shins as I move through it. My footsteps leave a trail behind me, wavering and soft, like a child’s movement through seafoam. I think, vaguely, that this might be illegal. But then again, so many of my favorite things were.

The fence is gone. That’s what breaks me first.

I hadn’t realized I was expecting it, some sliver of white-painted wood, chipped and half-rotted, still standing stubbornly against time. But there’s only the memory of it now, a faint line of flattened earth where it once stood, separating my yard from yours. A line we crossed and uncrossed like breath. I close my eyes, and I see it again. I see you.

You appeared one summer like a trick of the light: sun-drenched and half-wild, all scraped knees and tangled hair. You stood on the other side of the fence and grinned like you’d already decided I was yours.

“You look bored,” you said, leaning against the wood like it belonged to you. You said it like a diagnosis, not a question.

“I’m not,” I lied, sitting on the grass with a book in my lap I wasn’t reading.

You climbed the fence anyway. Landed like a cat. Asked if I wanted to build a boat.

“A boat?” I echoed, skeptical.

“A raft,” you clarified. “But like, a really good one. It’ll take us somewhere. Anywhere.”

I didn’t know why I said yes. Maybe it was because your eyes were two shades lighter than the sky that day, and your voice sounded like something that could carry me away.

We spent that whole summer in the space between yards, the no-man’s-land of suburban childhood. We tore down the middle slats of the fence and called it our harbor. We dragged over planks from your dad’s shed, rope from the garage, empty paint buckets, duct tape, bits of tarp. You brought a flag you’d made from an old pillowcase and a Sharpie: a rough crescent moon and two stick figures in a boat.

We named it Lady June. Of course we did. You insisted. “It’s not vanity,” you said, “it’s legacy.”

It never touched water. Didn’t need to. That was never the point. The important part was that it could have. That was your gift: making pretend feel like prophecy.

You told me stories, endless stories, spun from bits of truth and scraps of dreams. You said secret rivers ran under the city, that the school basement had a tunnel to the ocean, that some kids were born changelings and could breathe underwater. You said you were one.

I asked if I was, too.

You looked at me a long time, serious in that way you sometimes got, when you forgot to be funny.

“Not yet,” you said. “But maybe.”

We kissed once. Just once. It was just before a thunderstorm, the sky green with pressure, the air thick and humming. You kissed me like it was inevitable, and I kissed you back like it was nothing. Like it wouldn’t burn itself into my spine.

I remember the smell of wet grass. The static on your skin. Your hand holding mine too tightly, like you knew something I didn’t.

And then you were gone.

It happened so quietly I thought maybe I’d dreamed it. The house next door went dark. No moving van, no goodbye. Just silence. I rang the doorbell once, twice. No answer. The new owners moved in a month later. They planted a hedge and put up a taller fence.

I was fourteen. No one asked questions. Least of all me.

I step over where the dock used to be and find myself at the base of the old tree. The swing is gone, but the branch is still scarred where the rope once rubbed it raw. I remember pushing you, your laughter loud and bright, and the sound of my own heartbeat trying to match yours. I remember you daring me to jump from the highest arc, to trust the wind. I never could. You always did.

Somewhere deeper in the yard, a bird calls—a lonely, repetitive sound. A mourning dove, maybe. Or something else. Something older.

And then, somehow, I remember the tin box.

It’s sudden, like someone flicked a switch in a room I’d forgotten existed. I drop to my knees before I think. The dirt is dry and stubborn, but my fingers work through it like they remember, like muscle memory passed down from a younger version of me I no longer understand.

I find it by feel. A small, rusted tin, barely holding together. It cuts my finger as I lift it, but I barely notice. The hinges groan as I pry it open.

Inside: a folded paper boat. A photograph.

The boat is yellowed, its corners soft and curling, the pencil nearly faded. But I can still make out the scrawl: J + L. The boat has been crumpled and smoothed out more than once. My heart aches at the sight of it, this tiny, fragile artifact of us.

The photograph is worse. It’s grainy, off-center, clearly taken by accident or a child’s unsteady hand. Two girls, arms wrapped around each other, sun-drunk and smiling. My hair is shorter than I remember. Yours is wilder. You’re sticking your tongue out. I’m blushing. It’s the only picture I’ve ever seen of us.

You were real.

That’s the part I can’t stop circling. You were real. You existed. You kissed me. You told me stories. We built a raft together and tore down a fence. You were real.

I sit there for a long time. Maybe minutes. Maybe longer. The wind moves the grass around me. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolls again, soft and slow, like the earth remembering something it tried to forget.

I am seventy-two. My knees ache. My hands are stiff and dirty. The house I grew up in is rubble behind me. But in my hands is proof that I didn’t invent you. Proof that once, a very long time ago, I loved someone bold and strange and beautiful. Proof that I was loved in return.

There’s a kind of relief in it. And grief, too, but not the sharp kind. It’s gentler now. Like a tide coming in.

I slide the box into my coat pocket. The metal is cool and heavy against my side, grounding.

I rise slowly, brushing dirt from my skirt. The grass parts around my legs as I move, tall and golden and forgiving.

When I reach the edge of the lot, I pause. Look back once, just to see the sky hanging pale and wide above the skeleton of the house. The place is already forgetting me. That’s all right.

I don’t need it to remember. I remember enough for both of us.

And when I walk away, I don’t look back.