moving again

The boxes are from the last move. I have moved often enough that I've kept them. The packing is the part I'm good at now, which is a strange competence to have developed. I know which things need wrapping (the clay bowls, the frame with the broken corner that I've never fixed but kept anyway) and which things can go loose (the books, mostly, though people always argue with me about this). The thing I haven't figured out is what to do with the accumulated residue of a place. The pencil marks on the doorframe of the bedroom where I was tracking something I've forgotten now. The specific crack in the kitchen ceiling that looked like nothing and then in the second year started to look like a particular face. The view from the bathroom window, which was bad — a wall, mostly, with a small window in it — but mine. You can't take any of this. You can only know that you'll have new versions eventually. New cracks, new views, new residue. I've been doing this long enough that I believe it now. The new place becomes yours faster than you think. The specific smell, the particular quality of light, the sounds that become so familiar you stop hearing them — all of this is quicker than you expect. It's still sad, the boxes. It's still sad, closing the door of the empty flat. But I've done it enough times to know the sad has a finite length.