It’s the last night in this house, Shirley Ann Place, the house with my mother’s name, the tiny house in which we fell apart all the way and broke in a million pieces and slowly put ourselves back together again like a vase that was meant to be broken.

We cried and screamed and had sex and the neighbors heard all. Trash being taken out at 3am. Having to small-talk in the driveway more often than humanly possible.

But the sun every morning after the fog burns off is as bright as anything I’ve ever seen. Blinding. Lucky then that it pairs with the sea.

I offered liquor to the house wights to keep them oblivious to my departure; I whispered how we needed space. I tell them they will never know what this broken-down hundred year old house has meant, how it made a marriage stronger, how I patched the cracks in the plaster with tears, how it lived in me more than the other way around.

I don’t know how to exit professionally, how to feel. I’m longing for room to grow. I’m pining for that magic moment I saw a key on a sidewalk and knew it would open a million doors, even doors to houses on an opposite coast. That moment was just a moment, though. Winds change, tides shift, all that was dust is us, is dust, is us again.

Now begins the initial spark, though – the flinging recklessly headfirst into another adventure. We would not be who we are if we didn’t trust the net that’s underneath this high wire act. Love, love is all we have, right here, in this moment.

This singular moment.