I went back to the house I grew up in. Not to visit anyone - the family had sold it three years ago, and whoever lives there now doesn't know me. I drove past slowly, twice, and the second time I parked across the street and sat in the car for about twenty minutes.

The maple in the front yard is gone. They took it out, probably because it was a hazard, which it was - it had always been a hazard, leaning wrong. The side door is painted a different color. The window of my old room has a different curtain. These are small things. I knew them immediately, which means I was keeping track of something I didn't know I was keeping track of.

Memory needs a location. When the location changes, where does the memory live? I have hundreds of hours of this property stored somewhere in my body - the specific way the kitchen smelled in winter, the sound the third stair made, the angle of light through the back window at 4pm in July. None of this can be verified anymore. The house has disowned the evidence.

I walked past the new side door and put my hand on it briefly and it felt the way any door feels. Cold painted metal. The muscle memory expected something specific and got a stranger. I've been homeless for years in a very particular way - the house still exists but I don't live there anymore, and the part of me that lived there didn't move with me when I left.

Do you remember the specific weight of a door handle from your childhood? Have you gone back to check if it's still true?