there once was a light across the street, which would flicker on and off on and off and on again spelling “home” reminding me of all that ever began here only to end abruptly or, rather, slowly all at once I first learned to love with you, in this haunted room and I have been trying to rid us of the taste ever since but I cannot forget the piano and the old, grey chest of drawers two couches and a clumsy kitchen kittens in the windowsill with my mattress on the floor starting over painting the fireplace white, and hanging coffee, tea, and spices above the stove a big, new cabinet carried down five flights of SoHo steps which still left us empty in the end there were mussels in broth fish roasted whole and vermouth in big, glass jars the downstairs neighbors who wore sandals with socks and smoked cigarettes until sunrise and the musicians upstairs who became family friends over time in the spring there was pickled rhubarb and plum blossoms drying in the window and buds on the baby maple tree followed by basil on the stoop and a tomato the size of our outstretched palms and the timeline begins to blur because we started again from scratch, rearranging all the time never quite content baking cakes and boiling crab eating scallops and hand rolled pasta enjoying a bottle of wine best when drank alone there was always the fact (and by this I mean the problem) that you felt safe here and I did not instead I was stuck trapped and desperate wishing to make the most of a windowless life I moved the chairs around and we bought a new, blue couch but things just kept falling the way they tend to do and for a moment everything found its place for an instant we had our own world, here where these chipped walls and cracked floorboards were enough to hold collective weight we planted flowers and swept the porch clean hanging photos as though this life of ours were permanent we dug our roots deep possibly too far, too optimistically allowing them to intertwine getting comfortable with the idea of staying here awhile only to be reminded that things begin, always with the intention of ending eventually crashing like an air conditioner slipping from the third floor window shattering onto a garden that has been forgotten its table entombed in frost-bitten foliage but now my bags are packed the mirrors unhung pantry shelves beginning to empty and I am loving myself enough to leave with paper vines and roses as the only breathing proof of a life well lived a portrait of what could have been my skin feels somehow fresher, now though the ceiling fan is covered in dust and at night the radiator still clatters as though there’s someone or something caught inside of its pipes waiting, begging to be free so I sit still and listen closely soaking up the last moments of gentle rain and birds in the apple tree finding myself, suddenly untethered letting the same old jazz record spin looking backwards and forwards and hoping, or maybe praying but mostly trusting something good is on the horizon waiting, following a full moon home
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You have truly captured the hunger, joy, memories and sorrow of a place in time.