I first moved into this place in my early twenties, still in my delayed junior year at University.
The space is strangely laid out, with washer and dryer in separate rooms and a floorplan that is one part railroad loft and one part one part castle-keep. Splat plaster starbursts conceal a bow in the ceiling as pronounced as the one in the slat-wood floor.
This is the place that I would leave before dawn each day for the three hour transit ride to the last place I tended bar. This is where I was on my way back to when I had the accident that almost cost me my leg. This is the porch that my upstairs neighbors accidentally set ablaze, lives saved only because of my insomnia. This is the kitchen in which I cooked dinner for every third date I've had in my adult life. This is the room in which I slept a thousand nights with the third date that stayed around for five years but never with the third date I took the knee for. This is the porch on which I've enjoyed my nightly cigar what can only be three-thousand times now. Wise Gods, has it been that long?
Eleven and a half years. I've called this place my home longer than anywhere else, longer than the cottage in England, longer than the little house in Wisconsin, longer than the suburban colonial in north Atlanta, far longer than any of the dorms or corporate rentals that followed.
The Martians of Heinlein's future history held that spaces, homes, even entire cities must be relinquished when they become psychically saturated. As the ether of all our yesterdays fills them, they must be abandoned, left uninhabited as mausoleums for memories, museums of our personal histories.
It's nearly time for the grown up things that I've been so successful in deferring for a decade. It's time for a house, four un-shared walls, a one-line address, and all the expectations that come with it, and I don't know how to feel.
I teared up for a moment my last night under this roof, but I cannot explain to myself why.
