The Last Things from the Apt.

The things I carried weren't heavy -
They fit into a box under my arm.
The glass I used as a vase for the
flowers you bought me, that were
supposed to make it to our new place,
but kept being left behind.
The scratch pad I bought for my cats
when I first moved in, to dissuade
them from destroying the wicker
furniture that anyway they never touched.
A bar of herbal stain remover, a roll
of recycled paper towels, some
baking soda, castile soap, my
efforts to never use artificial cleaner -
A vow I broke the last day I was there,
after finding a bottle of chemicals
cowering under sink (I put it back).
In my other arm I carried the
moldy towels we'd used inside
our fridge to catch the drip-drip
from our icebox freezer, a FedEx
package for you, and an Eve Sedgwick
book that's since been recalled
to the library.
Before I left, I swept up our remains;
piles of dust bunnies, raccoons, and
tiny kittens forming and dancing
in the corners of our past life,
trickling down the stairs,
pursued by our dustpan, which
wasn't really ours (I put it back, too).
I shook the sheetless bed of its blanket
of dust and fidelity, and picked pieces
of our memories out of the carpet.
The hair, the dust, the dreams,
so much fell through my fingers and
is still scattered on the linoleum floor.
You can see them lying there,
in the pictures I took as I left.
I found pieces of your first visit
here, as I lie on the bed before leaving,
pieces of your devotion that I had saved
to wrap around myself while we
were apart. I found remnants
of our loving gazes and aching goodbyes
caught in the screen of our window
that faced the long driveway. I put
as many of these in my pocket
as I could. Our goodbyes now don't
have those gazes, where we live.
I carry a lot of warmth with me
to our new place, still cold and shiny
from being scrubbed bare of all
the pain that was once housed there.
I plan to decorate the walls again
with as much of my devotion as will
stick, and dust the carpet with
new memories, as they form.
The towels I'll wash, and the scratch
pad will hang on another doorknob,
hopefully dissuading the cats from
scratching the sofa your parents
brought us, which they've already
discovered. And I'll layer our bed
with the fidelity that's left, and hope
to make it extra toasty with my
electric blanket for you, once it
gets colder outside and you need
a place beside me, to keep warm.

- 10/12