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47 Nightmare before the Foreclosure I dreamed the new tenants erased my childhood. I dreamed they painted over the broom closet’s door. The door with the pencil marks my parents made each year to show how much my sister and I had grown. Twenty years’ worth of marks. Yardsticks on our skulls. We’d balance in the fumes of the closet’s shoe polish, shoulder blades thrown back. We’d practice a somber stillness, then flip and gloat over that year’s growth: whole inches in childhood, a half inch as we evened out as teens, even a sliver where we crammed ourselves in when we visited at Christmas. As we filled the closet with eggnog, with bourbon as we breathed. I dreamed the new tenants painted the door. I dreamed each pencil mark vanished, like rungs of a ladder tugged out. Where I’m left at the top unable to climb down. I awoke believing there’d be no proof left that my sister and I had ever been that small. I called 48 my parents the day after the nightmare. I asked if they’d bring the door with them when the house was sold. I asked them to unhinge it. I asked them to carry it with them. ...

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