New Neighbor, Old Ghost #WriteAPageADay #620

I hear the moving truck like an elephant’s slow waltz, Boxes stacked like forgotten Tetris games, The air smells of dust and citrus soap, And the street whispers gossip like an old beggar’s tune.

New neighbor, they say, With their folded arms and caffeine-smacked lips, A stranger from the fogged-up past, A misplaced comma in the sentence of my days.

Door creaks, Shoes shuffle, And I, drawn like a moth to a misplaced flame, Pull the curtains of my own curiosity—

There you are. Flesh and echo. Lungs filled with the air of my childhood laughter. Your shadow flickers in the autumn dusk And I swear I hear the snap of my bike’s rusted chain, The ghost of your hands steadying my fall.

Did you know I once swallowed a marble Because you said they held the universe? And we both waited, eyes wide, For the galaxy to bloom inside me.

New neighbor, old phantom, You, who threw pebbles at my window in a language of riddles, Who taught me the poetry of running barefoot in the dark.

Now you stand framed in the neon hum of moving boxes, Dust-draped ghosts spilling from their cardboard coffins. Your gaze meets mine, hesitant, amused— A crack in the dam of time.

“Hey.” A word, a feather, a ripple. Not a ‘hello,’ not a ‘how have you been.’ Just ‘hey.’ The first rung of an old ladder, The first brush of cold water on a sunburnt cheek.

Do you remember the hill we conquered with our wooden swords? Do you remember the storm, the way the trees bent like monks in prayer? How we climbed up to your roof and screamed at the lightning, Daring it to turn us into something more electric than ourselves?

I want to tell you I kept your cassette tapes, That your name is still carved into the spine of my summer diaries. That I never told anyone about the time you cried over a crushed ladybug, How you whispered, "everything should have the right to be enormous."

But I only say, “Need help with the boxes?” And your smile folds time into a paper airplane.

We step inside, Between walls breathing in fresh paint and the ghosts of old tenants, And suddenly the room is a time machine. We are ten, twelve, seventeen. We are the stories left in the margins of our notebooks, The ink that never faded, though we tried.

I pick up a box labeled ‘Memory’ And it is heavier than it should be. Inside, our past rattles like dice, Waiting to be thrown again.

You watch me watching you, And in your eyes I see the flicker of our secret handshakes, The summers that refused to be forgotten.

New neighbor, old ghost, You are a sentence unfinished, A chapter torn but not erased. And I think— Maybe, just maybe, This street never changed.

Maybe we never really left.

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That night, the moon hums an old tune, Sifting silver through my blinds. I wonder if you still count stars like we did, Fingertips tracing constellations on windowpanes.

Does the wind still carry our laughter, Or did it bury it beneath new asphalt?

The kettle wails, a sudden shriek of memory, And I pour the past into two chipped mugs. One for me, one for a ghost.

But the ghost is real this time.

Tomorrow, maybe, we’ll dig up our time capsule, Unearth our ten-year-old secrets— Notes folded into origami birds, Dandelion stems tied with twine, Promises inked on crumpled napkins.

Do you still believe in magic? I want to ask, But words hold their breath in my throat.

Instead, I leave my porch light on, A lighthouse against the sea of lost time. And when I see your shadow flicker behind the curtain, I know— Tomorrow waits with open hands.

#Poetry #Nostalgia #ChildhoodMemories #Reunion #LostAndFound #TimeCapsule #OldFriends #GhostsOfThePast