new things

This must be the place.

Sometimes, I think that all I want to do is sit here and listen to the rain.

This is a time out of time, 70-degree weather in late December, tricking me into believing things are what they are not. This must be spring. This must be a start, an overeager sprout. It must be beginning again. This must be the place. We’re all confused in all the ways.

I think of my apartment, my cats waiting in their time out of time, eager to wake me up in the early morning. I think of my crooked floor and everything that rolls under the fridge, blueberries from 2013… I try to consider how I’ll reconfigure our rooms, try to make them into something they can never be. I think about how I can extend my arms out in all directions here in Tennessee, how I can’t do that at home. I am thinking about what will have to go so that the new things can stay.

Downstairs, lots of laughter and the last of the champagne. I do four-count breathing to quell my anxiety; I am not looking forward to what’s next. I am very tired of questioning and weighing every move I make, every necessary decision. It is so tiring.

At the end of a twelve-hour-drive tomorrow, I will be surrounded by new things in an old old old place. The cats will circle our feet, meowing in dis/pleasure at our return. I will open the windows wide thinking it’s spring in New York too, but I am just confused. The little tree will be dry and crispy and I will once again wonder should I tied it to a rope and just lower it down the four flights to the street? No. I will take up my broom, my vacuum, and become the person I am when I’m in my place, buzzing about the apartment, circling endlessly, no task ever really finished, no surface untouched by something else, barely sitting for more than a minute or two before I think of what comes next.