How to Move Away

It's best to wake early, four, five a.m., while

the neighbors sleep and the moon floats

like a pearl in a pool of ink. In half-light

the empty house is less familiar, less sad—the walls

with their nail holes, the carpet—its patterns of wear,

curtains with no job to do. I sit

on my suitcase, eat powdered donuts;

a napkin for a plate, juice out of a paper cup.

Make one last check of the cupboards,

the drawers. Run my hand along

the countertops, the stair rail, trace

the walls with my fingertips, each scar

proof of my childhood, my initials

carved into the tree of this, our sixth house.

My family could write a Handbook for Leaving—

the way we pack up during summer solstice,

disconnect from people and places like an abrupt

shutting off of electricity. My father's convinced himself

that the unknown is always better, the way the retina sees

images upside down and the brain corrects.

Here I smoked

candy cigarettes, my breath in winter passing

for smoke, pale green of my bedroom. I counted

the number of intersections on the way to school (four).

I bundle memories together, weight them with stones

like unwanted kittens drowned in a creek.

What kind of animal constantly moves?

The point of migration is the return.

We're nomads without the base knowledge

of where to find water. These moves are

like arranged marriages; economics now,

love later. Maybe it's not against nature

to move. Most of the body is no more

than ten years old and blood renews itself

every 90 days. But leaving disturbs the fabric

of a place. I'd rather stay and witness change.

My mother always wanting to plant perennials

that we never stay to see. I pour some water

on the marigolds clattering around the mailbox,

Aztec flowers of death, their strong scent

a beacon to lost souls. Then we drive away,

the blank windows like the blank eyes of

the dead, waiting for someone to seal the past with a penny.

Source: The Nomenclature of Small Things (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016)