All is ending again. This time, in a scenery of autumn leaves and coffee stains. I stay up late to cocoon myself in a room I called a second parent all these years. But we are both aware of the ending that is coming our way. I am not sure if the knowing makes the grief any easier to swallow, to carry across the pond to the lake’s feet. When I leave these four walls, I know I am leaving much more behind than gray stones and copper roofs. Still, my tears will start a protest in these bedrooms so the new owners feel the loss in every corner but the love too. Because this is where all three of the dogs came from the shelter to greet a revival, this is the place where I last saw the eyes of a brother, this is the place where Thanksgiving became a tradition of laughter and a game of questions. This is the place where my childhood echoed in the backyard; in the swimming pool. Where barbies made a stage of my wooden floor, where so many farewells showed up young, where I grew into a teenager and then a young woman. These walls and paintings and photographs and stairwells saw my prom dress, threw a graduation party, kneeled in prayer at tragedy. These run-down couches overheard two parents becoming one. I cannot throw a fit. It is no longer cute at twenty-three (almost twenty-four!) to care so deeply about youth. Still, I have danced here, I have cried in these showers, I have played basketball in the driveway, I have written pages upon pages of each sun-dipped memory; of each anger-driven night. I have sung aside this rusted balcony, I have read in these shadows. How many words has this home bellied? How many moments does the kitchen island hold long after we have left and someone new stands upon our holy ground? Will the grandfather clock remember the pitches of our voices? I have to swallow the fear that this is a goodbye I cannot quite stomach. Because leaving these paint-chipped dressers, these fishbowl windows, these layers of dust on your comforter is no easy plight. The real goodbye is not to a New Jersey address but to a life where you existed so undeniably. Where your voice ran down the halls, your footsteps woke up mom at midnight, where your questions lingered, where your shoulders danced in the sitting room, and your smile cost more than any chandelier on the ceilings. How do you part from the past when it is all you have that strings you back to a brother? Reality is a drug that hasn’t kicked in yet. Will I miss the loneliness of tonight when my body is in another bed, beside a new view, inside a home you have never been to? It feels like life is forcing me to cut the ties; grow apart from your being. It feels like I am at the mercy of time and she is trying to make the future one you’d no longer recognize.