Moving With A Full Heart

This is a work of fiction

Summer

I sit here alone among these packing boxes learning to move on. I waft dust with my fingers off the portrait of us as I drop it into this cardboard coffin. I walk around and let my toes feel the indents in the carpet left by your dresser. I pick at your strands of hair left untouched on the shower walls just to remember us while I take my scalding showers. That’s gross I know but anything is sentimental when you can’t have them. I fumble in the closet to reach the depths of the highest shelves. Do you remember how much money I spent trying to win this elephant plushy at the fair and how cold it was? I just packed that jacket I gave you after telling you a million times to bring one. And if I leave these boxes unlabeled I’ll have no choice but to take you with me. To open it in the new apartment and be greeted by your warm smiling portrait again. And worst of all, tonight is foggy — our favorite time to cuddle under the blankets. We’d watch horror movies to match the aesthetic and poke at one other to scare each other. But now I go outside into the backyard and reel the cold, empty garbage can into the center. I drop your box inside and light it on fire. I won’t be dragged down by the weight of these sentiments any longer. I’ve compartmentalized myself for too long and I will not move this piece of you with me.

Fall

We always talked about moving to the bayside when we were older. What was once your dream slowly became mine. For so long I fawned over a future there with you and it felt like I lost a part of my promised future when we ended. So I moved there anyways in the hopes to reclaim my wholeness. These days I go down to the water to walk and count the birds as they fly away from me. I inhale the sea breeze and get notes of brine, gulls, decay and fish. I touch the trees and remind myself to stay grounded. Life is supposed to beautiful. I watch the sun set beyond the haze of the coastline and eat my PB&J while the birds wait for the first crumb to drop to attack. I journal. I write what I appreciate. I write about my day. And then I write about what I’m looking forward to. Looking forward, for me, is hope. It’s hope that tomorrow I will be complete. Tomorrow is a chance for grief to go away or happiness to linger. The future allows for today’s problems to sink away into the past to never be touched again. And tonight I’m grateful that I’ll get to fall asleep in the arms of the girl I’ve been seeing recently. As we settle in bed, I’m antsy to cuddle so I push away the book she’s been reading for the last week. She grabs my hand and pulls it closer to her face admiring the burn marks on them. She strafes along the edges of the contrasting burns with her finger.

“You know the character in this book is a klutz just like you. In the latest chapter he burned himself trying to catch a boiling kettle.” She said interlocking her fingers in mine.

“Maybe it was whole leaf Yunan white tea.” I yanked her hand as her body followed towards me.

She giggled.

Winter

It’s next year’s winter now. I haul the plastic wrapped mini Christmas tree on my shoulder up four flights of stairs. It has to be an anomaly how it can be freezing just beyond these thin walls and yet I’m sweating now. I get to the fourth floor and my girlfriend immediately runs to help cut the wrap and fluff the tree. She places it in the corner by the foggy window near the couch. We sit on the floor drinking hot chocolate she prepared while I was out as we put these cheap goodwill ornaments onto the tree.The ornaments have raunchy millennial jokes on them with suggestive Christmas images. I chuckle as I hang them up but she isn’t as amused as I am. She’ll probably remove them later but I don’t care. I stand up to marvel at the tree and I can’t help but notice a small yellow Volkswagen struggling in the snow outside. I used to make fun of you for your dingy little car that would rattle no matter what speed we went.

“What’re you thinking about?” She asks me with her head tilted to the side. Her hair falls silkily. Delicately like the soft flurry of snow.

“Something stupid.” I smiled.

Spring

“I don’t want to talk about it right now! Just go to work you’ll be late anyways.” She says lying down in bed facing away from me as I stand at the bedroom door.

“Okay.” I say defeated.

“I still love you okay?” She says, muffled by the sheets.

“I love you too.”

Spring

I stop by the flower shop on the way back from home. I get her a bouquet of chrysanthemums wrapped expertly by our florist, Emilio. He wishes me a good day and I fumble to open my umbrella while pushing open the door fighting back from the wind. When I arrive home I see her sitting on the floor rummaging through boxes. I survey the house and it’s different? Cleaner maybe? Organized for sure. She looks up at me and lets out the cutest sneeze from the dust. Her smile widens

“I missed you! Oh wow you got me flowers?” She hops up ready to snatch and secure them in a vase.

“I missed you too what’s going on? Stress cleaning again?”

She takes the flowers in one hand and hugs me with the other.

“Yep, Im almost done you like?” She makes her way over to the kitchen island. “I found this super dirty stuffed animal in one of your boxes is it from your childhood or something?” She looks down at the wrapping and carefully removes it.

“Hm that thing?” I see the elephant trunk peeking from cardboard box as I move closer. “A gift from an old friend I’ll toss it.”

“Are you sure? We can just clean it up and showcase it somewhere!”

“Nah there’s no need to hoard.” I toss the toy in the garbage as I head over to the neatly arranged flowers in the stained glass vase. “Let’s find a good place to put these so they grow twice as big tomorrow.”