flying the nest

we place each possession in a cardboard box
haphazardly sorting dresses, blouses, blazers
into separate garbage bags, rushed and flustered
we've only got the moving van for a day

well-loved novels with cracked spines and crumpled pages
high school yearbooks with silly scribbled inside jokes
ripped tickets from raw and raucous punk concerts
all of it's going into cardboard boxes

one last day to stir up the dust and dirt
left behind from the burning blazing days of youth
some trinkets shuttered in my old bedroom closet
some floating their way on to our new beginning

into the moving van, chugging along the road
clunking up eight floors to our sun-soaked apartment
where we can finally unpack and sort them all
find the right place for yours and mine to mingle

it's still a little messy, a little unsure
with some stumbles and stubbed toes along the way
but there's no one else i'd rather take this leap with
from this bittersweet precipice into the unknown