Blue spacemen in parachutes

   I am not the kind to go knock on the door, say I used to live there, and hope I am invited to come in and take a look around.  I think that would be too much.

   If I did, the place I would like to sit is not in any room, but at the top of the stairs.  That's where my room was, if you could call it a room.  It was more an old hallway, of sorts.

   I used to tie my shoes at the top of the stairs.  It was a good place for it.  Sitting comfortably with my feet one step below, reaching down twice perform the little magic trick.

   I remember standing at the top of the stairs tossing a blue spaceman with a parachute, watching him shoot quickly to the floor below and land with a hard, plastic knock.  Wishing he had fallen more slowly.

   I remember, when I was older, climbing the stairs on game nights, slowly, tiredly, feeling the floor-burns on my knees sting against the inside of my jeans.

  I remember climbing the stairs slowly, stealthily, when I came home late, after everyone was asleep, staying to the side instead of stepping in the middle of the stair, where it would creak.

  The house is out of the family now.  But I've got my own staircase.  A good place to tie my shoes.   I'd like to think the blue spaceman is lying tangled in a shoebox somewhere, waiting patiently.  But I don't think so.  The house that I grew up in belongs to someone else.  People I don't know.