and i push her to start with the boxes because i know they’re going to pile up and out and on top of each other until we are on top of each other without the interesting bits that used to happen when we were all alone before baby.
but she dilly and dallied until i started pulling her hair out or putting out the fire that is her thinking about it and just got it all moving along and even the baby helped by putting things in and, with a moment’s hesitation, putting them back out until i reached down and wrapped the edges round and round with tape even if i might have snagged baby’s hand between the seams from time to time.
and each time i thought i was done there was another corner with an article of clothing or an electronic doodad or niggling piece of nostalgia that begged for attention, inspection and packaging, and from neatly ordered and marked boxes of contents and destination it too soon became misc this over here to misc there.
i even had her feet in my hands pushing her up above closets into attics wobbling for the last piece of something or the other that we hadn’t seen in years, completely forgotten about but couldn’t let go for the life of us. when the boxes started covering the floor and blocking our view of the street where we would soon no longer face, the down and up to the tops of the closests finally bummed my left knee and i hobbled on to work.
every joint hurts, sore in the places where little muscles join big ones and a whole life gets packed right in front of your eyes in practically no time at all.