Three Trips and Done

I was stopped at the light when I saw it—

a mattress jammed sideways in the door,

a stranger's hands working to free it

the same way I had, years before.

Three years in that building.

I left in one day, three loads,

a rented van, the kind of hauling

that splits your thumbnail, corrodes

the muscles across your shoulders

for a week. I handed in the fob.

The super barely looked up. Holders

of keys change. That's the job—

not to make it feel like something.

I got in the car. Drove on.

I didn't feel anything—nothing

until I hit the highway, alone

in the van with the empty boxes,

and something quick and small,

not grief exactly. The reflexes

of leaving. Then the sprawl

of traffic, and I was fine.

The stranger backed up, angled

the mattress free, got a line

of blood on his knuckle—mangled

against the railing—and kept going.

The light changed. I went left.

The building withdrew, slowing

behind me. Not bereft.

Just gone.