EMPTY NEST / EMPTINESS, a visual essay originally published

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1. She will leave soon / for good / (for) a while / forever / for bad for / college

2. On her last night at home / she sleeps / in my bed with me.

3. We take things from her bedroom to the living room then to the car for the ride to the dorm.

4. She doesn't / exactly say Don't call me / but she says / I'll call you.

5. After the dorm I drive the empty car home. The Indiana skies mourn with me. 

6.  Home. Empty. I eat alone at midnight, Taco Bell and Cabernet.

7. My days are quiet and open.

8. She calls (feeling lost)

9. She calls. My speech partner, she says, has her major figured out and her minor and she's already done this job and that club and what if I don't figure it out?

10. She calls. I'm walking to Taylor's soccer game, she says, and it's a beautiful day and we are all walking around I am looking at all these college kids and I'm like they are all going to die someday, we are all going to die someday, someday I am going to die.

11. She calls. A shift. / I auditioned for / We walked around the stadium at midnight. / I'm going to a conference in / I signed up for / I love it. I love my classes. I love my dorm.

12. She texts me a picture of her on a blocky chair made of Keystone Light beer boxes and asks Can I post this on facebook?

13. It is the first time in my adult life that I've had a house, a week a month to myself. 

14. I paint a painting / and call it leaving.

15. We have new people to be.