I’ll wake up in Bedroom #1. If I’m good, it will be 6 a.m. and I’ll have four hours before the movers come, to make myself coffee and eat a donut and make sure everything is folded up and packed. If I’m realistic, it will be 9 a.m. and I’ll have just enough time to make sure I’m not smelly before they call saying that they’re downstairs.
We’ll break everything or we’ll break nothing or we’ll break some things but they’ll be the things I love. I’ll lose my wallet or I’ll leave it behind. We’ll go fast. I’ll fall down the stairs and hit my head and get a concussion and have to go to the hospital. I’ll be carrying my mattress down the stairs when they lose grip on it and it topples over on top of me. I’ll die. They’ll steal my stuff. Or that won’t happen and they’ll only make fun of the job I’ve done packing and we’ll forget ten percent of my stuff. I’ll close my window and lock the doors and go downstairs to the van.
The van will roll over, off the highway, smashing ten cars and killing three. There will be music about not going back or can we leave before it gets too bad or everything sucks but hey I like your smile. My boxes will disintegrate. It will rain or there will be another derecho or it will be so hot our sweat soaks the cardboard. Dinosaurs will exist again and a pterodactyl will attack us right as we find parking in front of the new building. The new building will be the wrong building and we’ll have to get back in and find it for real. We’ll get lost or pulled over or hijacked by a pirate who just came from the harbor and really wants to find a good sandwich, you know? Or we’ll be accosted by ninjas with samurai swords or some man will run out in the middle of the street and brandish a hatchet at us. Road warriors will take all my stuff and I’ll be left stuffless.
Or maybe we get to the building and everything is mostly fine. The doorman will glare at me. I’ll pretend like I don’t have that much stuff when really I have a lot of stuff. I’ll say every time we get in the elevator how fun it is to have an elevator. I’ll tell them it’s like living in a hotel. I’ll smell. They’ll smell. They’ll pile my stuff all wrong. I’ll thank them and pay them and they’ll leave.
I’ll fall asleep in Bedroom #2 or on the sidewalk or in the back of the van I still haven’t returned to U-Haul because I decided to move to Michigan instead.
The Adelpheans 