Leaving is Easy

It is just a concrete floor and a metallic window frame, a bed and two wooden benches. A room. Fabric and jewelry and mosquito netting shades and lights four walls. A breeze that sighs. That's it. Nothing more. So put away what will fit, leave the structure behind. Here, let me help you. 

Just pack. Sit down and sort through what you collected. Your new suitcase is there, laying open, empty. Don't forget that ring she gave or the gold to remember, the pages of the diary torn out and restarted and thrown down in frustration, or the ones read and reread for appreciation. The basket holding an apology, the bracelet, the book. These are only things. All you need to do is pack them away. 

Let's make the bed. The mattress that held your body's impression; every time you lay down you sank a bit lower, got a bit closer, settled in a bit deeper. Sheets were scrambled and layered without their corners tucked in; remember how you liked getting tangled with their cooler side? But now it's time. Let's make the bed. 

All you need to do is sweep the floor. It's the one that forever imprinted dust on the soles of your always dirty feet, held hesitation and courage, bared the weight of impossible choices and endless questions and unbridled discovery. A slate to lay the ebbs and flows that swelled from shaking toes to bouncy curls. It knew that weight, felt those impressions, breathed in cracked earth. All we need to do is sweep it blank. 

Just draw the curtain and close out the light.  The one that embraced in the mornings and scorched in the afternoons and invited comfort in the evenings. Because it felt everything. Saw every inch of you. Held you closer when you decided to slip away and let you go when you found that your feet could run. The smiles it touched, lips it graced. Just shut out the light. 

Please just close the door. It was only the wood that kept you shut away but led you closer, melodies and words and tears and awakening. Forget what happened there in between the frames. The entrance into things that were new; what got shattered and thrown and put together whole in astounding ways. The handle that creaked and turned towards you revealing smiles and chai and family and life. All you have to do is close it. 

Walk away now. Please, just go. Say your final words and give your final love because it's all finished.  Maybe a deep embrace if you feel like your heart might stay behind to beat stubbornly among the banana leaves, your passion to burn with the three-stone stove, your spirit to dance with the songs at night, your laugh to play with lessons under the stars. Don't fall apart when you look at them, the eyes saying a brave goodbye. How could you have known that your soul would give too much? Or that it would be so perfect? Stand up tall. A reassuring smile. Wrap indifference around you. A momentary spell to forget the agony of it all slipping into past. You can do it. Please, one foot then the next.  Yes. That's it. Walk away. 

See?

Leaving is easy.