This place is everything that French vanilla smells like/ it’s sun streaming through the cranberry glass on the windowsill/ it’s the perfumed soaps I look for every visit/ it’s a place frozen in my memory that I know won’t always be still

The foothills that roll from each city to the one with your home/ I could map out this town without any direction/ I’m afraid for the day that I won’t need to navigate it anymore/ for the day that I no longer turn to you for my easy vacations

Childhood memories float from frames hung in the hall/ the postcard on the fridge I wrote to you from afar/ the stuffed animal we’ve been hiding from you for years/ the pool room we spent the last decade washing the dogs in seems so far

I see this place in every mug and it’s coffee grounds/ each antique store I enter I hear your words of advice/ never start a collection, though your china cabinets are filled/ and I see it especially in each roll of my Yahtzee dice

You warned me not to age though it’s inevitable/ I refuse to believe that this place will never not be yours/ for now it’s where I learned to swim and play cards/ a place where love is free and life is pure