Skip to main content

Moving Day

Every box I pack has an extra load to carry. I pack into them a little sorrow. A little yearning for what is lost. There - peeking out from the corner of a box of clothes: some orange fabric of disappointment, the ruffled edge of misunderstanding. I try to pack the books into smaller boxes, so I can carry them out by myself. But they're heavier even so, than they should be... They force me to bear more than their own weight - laden as they are with hidden bricks of anger.

I didn't want my leaving to become a weapon. The dull sword's edge of resentment. But these boxes aren't moving themselves to the car on their own. Some pain must lift them off this unswept floor... Something of the fight left in me to acknowledge all the small and quiet wrongs of this thing; oh, the big things stare you loudly in the face and you can laugh them down, stuffing them into the closet under a fluffy duvet... But the small things - the kitchen utensils of pettiness and picture frames and candlesticks of selfishness, the pack of cards and paperclips of not seeing one another, these are inescapable. They will not let me linger.

M

Comments

z said…
Mayim, you write so eloquently that I feel I am actually carrying those boxes. They are so damn heavy.
1:45 pm
z said…
Mayim,

I had to return to this post in the midst of the chaos of moving. Your beautiful writing gives me comfort. It's one of my all time favorites.

Z
7:27 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May your children's children have painful bunions!

So I was sitting with my tired feet being gurgled in the bubbling jets of a cheap vietnamese manicure shop pedicure chair when I look over to see some preppie chick giving the pedicure girl a hard time. She was apparently unhappy with the level of exfoliation her stupid tootsies had recieved. Fine. Well, first of all, you are paying for what is the equivalent of a happy meal in the scheme of the grand pedicure menu, bitch, so what do you want? But beyond that ... Her tone was so disdainful and contemptuous, and the pedicure gal handled it so graciously ... Just looking at her sitting there at the feet of this ho-bag, massaging her callouses with the pumice stone one more time, trying to get it right, to make the girl happy, I was SHAKING in anger by the time the whole scene played out and the check was practically THROWN at the poor woman. SHAKING. I mean, okay - you're unhappy with the services you received. You complain. Acceptable. Fine. But for fuck's sake you can speak to ...
8 comments
Read more

here i go again

it seems as though i tend to take up writing again, when i do, in spring.  i don't know that i have any particular reading of this observation, it's just something i noticed.  maybe something about renewal and starting fresh, starting over? i am sitting in my living room and the windows are open and it's a bit chilly but the fresh air feels good.  i have a blanket on my legs and i am sitting cross-legged on a chair.  it's funny to think about writing this blog from this place, this here-now, when i have written it in other places before.  when i think about this blog, it's as though i give it a particular time-space all its own, but i also associate it strongly with the apartment where i lived when it all began.  which feels (and i guess sort of is) a lifetime ago.  i feel like a completely different person, this almost-ten-years-in-the-future me.  back to that catch-up conundrum.  how to explain how different i am now, and all that's happe...
4 comments
Read more

You Tremble at the Edge of Gone

The first time I saw D was my first day back at school the first semester of my sophomore year in college. When I opened the door (after my last two roommates, dreading who or what I might find when I entered), I saw her squinting at me from against the radiator at the far wall of the tiny rectangle that was our dorm room, smoking a Marlboro Light 100. I'll never forget the brand she smoked. They fit her. They were slender and inconspicuous, the box long and cream and white and somehow common but sophisticated. I don't know what it was, and I'm trying to remember it now - it frustrates me that I can't - that told me in an instant that we were kindred spirits. She was beautiful, slender, native american. She had almond eyes and high cheekbones and long brown hair ... we shared a sort of eclectically funky style. She was fond of loosely woven brown sweaters and a sort of rust colored lipstick that brought out her eyes, hair, skin ... she wore too much makeup to cover old ...
6 comments
Read more