Listen for the Leaving

When I was small,
I filled my bed with stuffed animals
until there was hardly room for me.

My mother would tuck them in around me—
fifty soft bodies, perhaps more—
and laugh as she tried
to find her daughter beneath them.

There was a long pink rabbit
with white polka dots,
a great white fuzzy head,
soft hands, soft feet,
and limbs made for wrapping around
the whole small world.

I carried her over jungle gyms.
I dragged her through childhood.
I loved her before I understood
that love could make anything mortal.

Then scarlet fever came.

While I was sick,
my animals disappeared.

When I returned to school
and came home again,
I saw them from the upstairs landing,
piled inside the dumpster.

My rabbit lay across the top,
her long arms and legs
hanging over the edge
as though she had tried to climb out,
as though she had waited for me
until waiting was no longer enough.

Inside the apartment,
my mother had made me
a new quilt,
a pillowcase,
curtains to match.

Her love was waiting in clean fabric.

But no one had explained
that something new could be beautiful
and still fail to replace
what had been taken.

A few years later,
my stepfather went out
for ice cream and cigarettes
and did not come home.

That was the story
given to the child.

The truth was made of choices,
prison walls,
and a mother with two daughters—
one of them a brand-new baby—
left without a home.

He returned.
He disappeared.
He returned.
He disappeared.

Throughout my childhood
he passed through our lives
like weather through an open window,
and every time he came back
hope unpacked its little suitcase.

Every time he left,
we folded hope away again.

Years later,
he died beneath the Burnside Bridge
while in police custody,
and every imagined future died with him:

the explanation,
the apology,
the reckoning,
the chance to ask
why we had not been enough
to make him choose the road home.

Then my mother left this world,
and the first wound opened again.

You will come home.
You will look for what you love.
It will not be there.

So I built a life
in which I would be the one who stayed.

For my children,
I became the morning light,
the answered telephone,
the familiar voice in the next room.

I wanted them to wake
and know that love
had survived the night.

When lovers came,
I needed to be chosen
with the desperation
of a child trying to rescue
a pink rabbit from a dumpster.

I wanted to wake beside someone
and know they would still be there.

But I had learned
to listen for the leaving
before the leaving ever came,
to love with one hand reaching
and one hand braced against the pain.

In the name of love,
I let other doors close.

Family.
Friendship.
Pieces of myself.

I built my world around one heart
while waiting for it to disappear.

Then the dogs came,
and one died.

A lover nearly died.

One child left home,
then another.

COVID crossed the earth
and took friends and family
before any of us
had learned how to say goodbye
from a distance.

My oldest stepped into his own life,
and I stood at the border
wondering whether letting him go
was the right kind of love,
praying the world would hold him
where my arms no longer could.

I returned to Humboldt,
the place I thought
I had already released.

Then one of my dearest friends died.

Then my dog.

A single month carried them both away
and expected my heart
to continue beating
between the departures.

Then my hair began falling out,
and even my own body
became something
I could not persuade to stay.

Love dissolved.

Promises crumbled.

Dreams of forever
became more things
I was expected to release gracefully.

And now my sister—
the baby he left behind—
stands near the same old edge.

Her choices may take her
where my love cannot follow.

She is here,
and she is disappearing.

I have been grieving her
while she is still alive,
leaving a light in the window,
hoping she remembers
there is a road home.

Everyone calls it letting go
as though letting go
were a gentle spiritual practice,
as though I had not spent my life
having my fingers opened
one by one.

I know how to let go.

I have let go
until my palms remember nothing else.

What I do not know
is how to welcome love
without preparing its funeral.

How do I open
when goodbye is all I know?

How do I let love find me
when love has always had to go?

Perhaps love is not the leaving.

Perhaps leaving is the wound.

Perhaps love is the quilt
waiting inside the apartment,
the light left burning,
the mother who tried,
the child who stayed,
the friends who once knew my name,
the animals who trusted my hands,
the children who carried my love
with them when they left.

Perhaps I can love my sister
without following her
into every wilderness.

Perhaps I can leave a light for her
without burning down my home.

Perhaps I can grieve
what I cannot save
without throwing myself away beside it.

The child on the landing
still sees the rabbit.

She still wants to run down the stairs,
climb into the dumpster,
and rescue every beloved thing.

So I will go to her.

I will take her hand.

I will tell her:

Some people will leave
because they must.

Some will leave
because they choose to.

Some will be taken
before either of you is ready.

You will not always be able
to bring them home.

But you do not have
to disappear with them.

There is room for you
inside your own life.

There has always been room for you.

You can open your hands to love
without letting go of yourself.