That house, this heart

My friend calls me Sunday, says, Your blog is boring lately, it's only photos.

I take an audible breath to fill the silence. Yeah, I tell her, sometimes that's all I have to say, the pictures. It's not a cop-out, it's just all I can do at the moment.

What I don't tell her is how tight my chest feels, just above my heart. And how rotten my stomach feels, just below my ribs. I don't tell her that this is making me more sick than poetic, more ill than wistful. I don't tell her that there are times in my life that I cannot put into words, or, better yet, even I recognize the futility in trying.

The last time my chest felt this tight, I cried for hours. I railed against my world, my life, my reality. I let it go, and where it went was safe but not pretty, pure to be sure, but still feeling weak. It's not impossible but it is challenging, to walk the rocky road without the one who used to support my fall.

Had my friend called on Saturday, I don't think I would have a word different, no argument. What do you want from me, I'd ask? You have my number, you can call if you want to know. This or anything. On Friday as well. Can you imagine a life, a home, blown apart? Blown to bits without any damage? Without anything breaking but you? That is what this move is like. We are breaking apart a whole: this goes there, this in that box, the ornaments we'll save for later, Do you want this, Someone should take this, What do we do with this? I've always loved that.

Everything lands someplace, somewhere, even if behind.

The things no one chooses, the things no one wants, they are left behind. They wait for the Estate Sales Company to arrive, separate, touch, highlight, sell. I feel guilt like heavy blocks on my heart and shoulders when I realize what I do not want, cannot store. But that, that is the sweater she like somuch, or that shoe polish smells like him. There is no more room. In my house, in my brother's house. We let some things go. We have to do so. It does not feel good, the decisions we make to keep or let go.

It tosses me awake at night. I should have kept the tray. I should have kept those buttons, that coat, the shoes.

You can't do that, you cannot. You have to let go. Trust me, or let me trust these words... it's impossible to keep everything and keep yourself as well. I know this is true.

We cannot go to the house until Tuesday night. Forbidden to go home. Other people manage the house now, manage the contents now. It's that Estate Sale. I want to toss a ball through the window, just to startle them, just to let them know that I know they're looking through our stuff. Just because I am me.

I think of Mom, in her room, open-mouthed like a baby bird waiting to be fed. I look at the photo of her young self, standing beside her horse, open-eyed, waiting for the magic of life to enter her bones and take her.

I wonder what it would have been like to be her friend, to know her then, through her journals she left in my hands, through the photos, on that camping trip where they went topless. Would I be there? Would she like me? Would we fill dance cards together and giggle the next day? Would I have teased her about the dance she went to with my father, and, very unlike her other dance cards, did not dance with another man?

I look at my watch, at the calendar. The days are ticking off. On Friday we close. On Friday, the familiar left from the freeway, stop at the light, right at the next stop with the blinking light, left at the next stop sign, past the elementary school, mine, the kids, don't pause just keep going, stop, go straight, and then right at the next, first house on the corner to the right -- will no longer be my path. I've driven home along those roads, those turns, so many nights I've driven that way home. How do I train myself to keep going, remind myself that road is no longer my drive on Christmas morning?

It's an empty house now. Vacant of life, echoing, swirling circles of dust and memories throughout. It's mysterious and magical, lonely and full, hungry to be filled again. It's everything we put there, and everything we pull from there. It's just a building, just bricks, but it's our bricks, hers and his, and we saturated them with our lives, our love. And the house we built, it looks at me crestfallen, asks for life again. I wouldn't deny the seeds we planted.

Our home, soon to be another's. Goodnight kisses, all around. Hugs across the air. Ssshhh, goodnight, love, go to sleep.

I stand on the street, beneath the Pines, the Oaks, the Moon. I look at the dark house. Goodnight, love, I breathe, I'll miss you. I will always miss you.

And then I let go, just let go. And I do not look back.