The Last Mark

I was going to post a picture of the door frame but I deleted it because it made me fucking miserable.

The house became so quiet.

Not empty.

Quiet.

There is a difference.

Empty is a place waiting for someone to fill it. Quiet is a place that already knows they never will.

The hallway looked smaller than I remembered. The paint had faded. The hardwood still creaked in the same places, almost like the house hadn’t realized it had grown old.

I walked into my bedroom first.

The posters were gone. The shelves were naked. There was still a small hole in the wall where we’d wrestled one summer and I pushed him a little too hard. Pops loved it, mom was mad.

We blamed each other for it for years.

His room was my room.

The bed was made.

Everything exactly where he left it.

I always thought he might still come home.

I couldn’t stay in there very long.

I turned to leave, I passed the kitchen entrance and stopped in front of the old doorframe.

The height marks.

Mom used to measure us every birthday.

Then dad did.

My name.

His name.

Mine.

His.

Year after year.

Two brothers racing to be adult with pencil lines climbing higher every summer.

I smiled when I found the mark where I finally passed Mom.

Then Dad.

I kept following the lines up.

Mine kept going.

His didn’t.

His stopped halfway up.

I stared at it longer than I should have.

Because it was lower than mine.

But it wasn’t supposed to be.

I ran my fingers over the last line someone had ever drawn for him.

The pencil marks faded.

The memories didn’t.

For years those marks measured our height.

I stood there, and I realized they had been measuring something else.

Time.

The distance between two brothers.

The number of birthdays we shared.

For the first time in my life…

I was taller than him.

I would’ve traded every inch to lose that feeling.

I rested my hand on the frame and lost myself.

I still wait for someone to make one more mark.