Goodbye

Leave it all on the table you’ve set each morning. Leave the warmth of familiar sounds, tiny spoons clanking on cups, the creaks of the house always settling deeper into this piece of earth we came to love and grow on. Leave slowly; first your unmade bed, then the doorways, then those you love. Only some will be waiting when you return.

Turn off all the lamps, walk down the staircase, whisper goodbye to the mirrors that watched you unfold into this woman. Leave quietly in the middle of the revolving night when your heart is the only thing awake. Leave before the golden light floods the hallway. Before the table invites you to sit with her, before your mind disrupts this tenderness, before the birds, as always, begin to sing the day alive.