Tempest

I wake early again, a hazy light outside my window says the wildfires of Canada still rage, the sun merely an orange glow in the sky, a speck of dust behind the Williamsburg skyscrapers. The air smells like late nights at camp. A neighbor gifts me moving boxes, they stack up in a corner of the shoebox, while I try to consider what pieces will make it to the new life. Management doesn't answer my emails, but perhaps it's just as well: I don't know what I want them to say, anyway. 

Late at night, staring at the East Village lights outside the window, I think perhaps it is too soon to go. That this place only ever saw me in illness, that I only ever saw this place under the shroud of darkness, and perhaps there is hope for us yet. But on my lips rest the charms of the two-year itch, of the need to death clean and live with only the suitcases I can carry. I look at houseplants and contemplate what will come. The avocado is thriving. The geranium grew out of cuttings my mother carried on a plane across the continent, I would never go without it. 

The road lies tempting and simmering just outside my line of vision. I know the promises it holds. I pick up disused charging cords, pandemic puzzles, a crock pot I haven't used in four years. 

Think, how light would I be not to carry these things? and answer only,
light enough to fly.