I came home after months of being away at college.

New paint, new furniture, new decorations. But nothing changes a space more than time away from it after years of its monotony.

I returned to my parents house this week. Less than three months of college have gone by, and yet nothing is the same. Everything is where I left it, my clothes in my drawers, my belongings and trinkets on my desk or in my bedside table or in boxes on the floor. But I've changed.

It's all smaller now. Every year we make pizzelles. Big waffle cookies with a hint of licorice. They're smaller this year. Tiny to how I remember them. The counters are low, the ceilings and walls claustrophobic. I never fit on my twin size mattress anyway, but now it shows. I feel it.

Months ago, everything used to feel bigger at night. I'd cower under the safety of the sheets, pulling away as I surveilled the shadows in the corner, scanning my mind for scraps of courage I could bind together into enough guts to tiptoe across the hallway.

The open door immediately to my left, the faint lights of the office appliances, the recursive mirrors in the bathroom in which I saw four more of myself every night, and wished those people goodnight out of the superstition that they'll be upset with me if I stopped, their memories are laced with fear and helplessness.

Now the house is just as small at night. The journey across the hall doesn't feel like miles, it feels like the four steps that it is. The monsters and spirits that hide inside the shadows and around the doors and behind the mirrors don't scare me. They skitter off when they see me coming. It feels as though my head reaches the ceiling, that I duck through doorways and look down at the rooms, closer to toyboxes and dioramas than living spaces.

I know these halls just the same, but the monsters and the spirits have names now. I know them. I look down on them. I stay up late into the night to reminisce, to haunt, to relive.

The pages don't turn the other way, this much I know. And there's no space for me under the bed. No more hiding, no more safety. I occupy the whole house at once. Soon, I'll step foot inside for the last time, never to return. I suppose I shouldn't be afraid. I never could return, anyway.