we sit on the cold hardwood floor in our

empty living room and i can’t believe our

rug is gone, trashed, and our

chairs are gone, sold and our

books are gone, shipped and our

friends have gone home

and we are the only ones left in our

small studio apartment that feels bigger than usual

and i still refer to all of our past things as “ours”

even though we may never see them again, own them again,

even though they are just things,

except the friends, those are friends

but that was the rug we agreed on after three months of searching,

the rug that fit under the coffee table perfectly:

two concentric circles for us to crowd around

and those were the chairs we bought when the bookstore cafe closed

and we wanted a piece of literary history

and those are the books we gifted back and forth,

scribbling nonsense in the margins

and this was our life

and i’m not ready to leave it;

maybe that’s why it took so long for me to pack,

maybe that’s why i rescheduled the flights at 2am,

maybe, just maybe, i want to sit here in this now-empty apartment,

spoon-feeding you peanut butter and talking about our

shared memories, the ones stuck somewhere in time between y(our) mind(s) & mine,

for ever, or longer, in this apartment and in this life,

that won’t be ours

tomorrow.