Breakable Contents

Moving Out.

Moving Out.

You moved out today. Metaphorically at least. I have to learn to be okay with this. I have to help you roll the packing tape over boxes of the meticulously packaged pictures you'll toss as soon as you abandon our doorstep. I have to decide who gets the throw pillows on the bed we shared because you don't care. Keep them all you scream. it doesn't matter. But it did. It did. I want to yell back. But you have long faded into the drywall we painted last summer . And you leave. You leave things you didn't care to remember. You leave me hollow and empty. I almost feel nothing as i try to fall asleep in an empty bed. But I can't. Everything is so loud. I turn on every single light, I rip off the duvet cover we picked out with your mother, I throw your favorite pillows against the dresser we share, sorry, shared. I scream so loudly I feel the vertebrate of our house, shit, my house, shake and whimper under my feet. It might be my house but this isn't home anymore. I walk down stairs and crumple to the floor. Everywhere I look, there are ghosts and I can't breathe. Phantoms of us arguing over ice cream, dancing in the kitchen, tracing the carpet with our toes, kissing the floorboards, filling the house with laughter and the closets with linen. But all of a sudden, you needed something new. A house in the city, the country, maybe in the mountains. Whats wrong with this one? Doesn't it make you happy? I don't know, you said. This echoed through the house before you continued. I want to be happy, but I might be happier somewhere else. The carpet gave me more comfort then, as it held my shaking elbows. I'm sorry, I think you say, but the draft carries the ends of your words away like a broken kite. I just don't understand! I yell after you, my words hitting the concrete like empty bullets. But you were already gone.

For a while I sat there, I ran my fingers along the baseboards and the crown molding, the marble counter tops and the high ceilings. I stayed, I redecorated, but I became okay. I could walk through the hallways without the empty closets swallowing me whole. Sure, I had house guests but it was well known across the neighborhood I wasn't looking for permanent residents, just dinner parties to fill the empty space.

On that night everything is the quiet void I had gotten used to. I had become accustomed to the lack of your harmony among the night's sleepless breaths. But then, the front door opens. Your voice met my sleepy eyes as I tiptoed down the creaky stairs to see your shadow. Your eyes light up brighter than the bulbs I kept on all night, because you had hoped I would have stayed home all this time. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have moved. Here is home. I got lost, I'm sorry. Can i stay here- I think you might have said something else but i stole the ending of that sentence. I knocked the suitcases from your grip and wrapped my arms around your neck. Yes, I said. You are always welcome here.

Reality throws me from my sleep and back into my bedroom. The sheets on your side neatly tucked in, the way you used to do when you tried to avoid waking me up before work. Floorboards in the dining room groaned with neglect, yearning for dinners and sock covered toes to trace its surface again. (I only eat there on holidays. Our prom pictures have made pitiful place mats.) I can't bear to close my eyes again. Even darkness reminds me of you, and maybe that's the point. 

P.s

There is nothing more temporary,

than people.