Anticipating Goodbye

At times, I just need to write something out. It might be a choppy poem or a single sentence, but I record little pieces of my thoughts in my phone when the moment comes upon me. Here is one of them.

* * *

I remember sitting on the porch

smelling the honey air-

and then

the realization.

This is my last spring at home.

And the melancholy crashed upon my insides

like a wave on the shoreline rocks.

Last spring. Me, here, as I am. Mom and Dad. Home.

And I remember too, standing on the sidewalk with shovel in hand,

the hazy glow of the streetlights after a snowfall.

The familiar feeling of the city at night, the snow freshly fallen. 

Even if it was April, I thought:

My last winter.

My last winter home. Me here,

snowflakes in my hair, the enchanted city,

the world muffled by the snow, 

the sky that certain color that only exists when it has just snowed in the night.

And I can see it coming, too, when I will bend over the garden, 

dirt in my fingernails and crowning my knees. 

When I'll unpin crisp and windswept clothes from the clothesline, 

or stand with hands in soap and murky water, washing the dishes, 

and face to the window letting the summer night in.

I'll hear it in the crickets:

Anna, you're leaving.