Here Comes the Sun
On letting go of the things we carry.
They grow up so fast, Gabriel says with pride. A friend who helps me with all things brawn and power tools, Gabriel’s the man when I need one. He stands beside me in my new home littered with ripped-open boxes and piles of trash bags. A tabby cat howls in the background, sotte voce. A couple weaves in and out of rooms with bleach and wet mops singing in Spanish. Here I am — the first-born who tumbled and fell out of the nest six stories. The wounded bird with clipped wings who taught herself to walk then fly. Now, I’m plopped on a sprawling rug shouting more? when I spy Gabriel wheel in cartons of books.
It took me four years living with nothing to realize the weight of the things I carried.
You have DVDs, he chuckles as I chuck them into trash bags along with the bins of expired spices and dried fruit, the tubes of red lipstick and expensive face creams, and the sheets that smell of mildew and cobwebbed attics. Who needs four sets of sheets? Plates that could serve a family of six? I hold my head in my hands and breathe because I feel overwhelmed by things I don’t need, never needed, but thought I needed. Things that whispered our girl came from nothing and look at her now! No longer does she have to buy chicken legs from bodegas and light candles when the power shuts off because the bills were…
