One day, when you and I were at your house, we were trying to invent new words and somehow came up with the word spicket. Recently inspired by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, we decided its definition would be “the emotion you feel when everything is normal but like two inches to the left. things seem ordinary but there is an unmistakable feeling of something just being off.” i loved the word and you and i said we would start using it as much as possible, and try to get others to use it. it never really happened. i mean, for a few weeks, when something would remind us of it, we tried our best to keep the joke alive but it died down almost the same way our friendship did. Slowly but all at once, too. Maybe someone should invent a word for that.

Recently, the irony of it all has dawned on me. All these months I’ve been looking for a way to describe how I feel lately and the word was right there all along.

With Jake, on the railroad tracks‍. I couldn’t stop staring at the decayed wood and seeing myself 4 years ago, stepping on the same planks, even venturing out to smoke the same way we always did, but now he has long hair and i was holding another boy’s hand and he doesn’t call new hampshire home anymore. With Gabe, ducking into the giant metal pipe and yelling ECHO! like we always did but now there are only our two voices yelling back and there’s an empty silence between our every sentence. With Mr. Rue, walking into his room at seven am like i always did, wearing the same clothes, even carrying the same backpack, but now i wear no makeup and the back room is locked and i’m only in there to apologize. With my mom, stepping through the same front door onto the same stone floor, but now i see her body on the ground there in front of me and it won’t ever go away, it’s always going to stay.

You and I, in that small room clogged with candle smoke, just like before. A few of the same posters are on the wall. I sit on the same blanket that I sat on, that I slept under, hundreds of times before. But I look at you and your hair is no longer a vibrant puddle of purples and blues. It is blonde, dirty, and it’s its pulled back into a tight ponytail. I speak to you and your voice feels as though it belongs to that of a stranger. I look through your notebook, and all your old writing is still in it, but the latest passages weren’t written by the Ashley that I used to know. These railroad tracks might be the same, but something is different. These echoes are our voices but I know there is something still missing. This classroom is still room 247 but I know I’m not here for the same reason. This stone floor is still cold beneath my feet but I can no longer step forward. This room, it looks so much like your bedroom, but I feel spicket inside of it’s walls. Nothing will ever be the same.