springtime

spring has always been a season of goodbyes. we talk of fall as the time of fading, but every year since before i can remember, spring is the season in which something golden shines bright and dies.

we always leave at the end of spring, the beginning of summer. i've left twenty houses, all in the spring. every spring since i was three, i pack up everything i own into trunks or suitcases and everything changes, again. again again and again. eighteen springs of leaving and being left.

spring looks like a trunk, a plain black trunk with silver buckles, duct-tape on the side with BRINKMAN lettered in permanent marker. amid the flowers, the fresh green, the lone daffodil that pokes its head up out of the wood chips by the library, an early riser- there's always a black trunk waiting to swallow up my belongings and my past.

i've already found myself sitting in the rocking chair in my room, a gift from my roommate's father who outgrew it and bought a recliner, staring at the row of books under my bed and wondering whether it would be wiser to put them in one big box or an array of little boxes, easier to carry. i've already considered whether to roll or lay flat my paintings, whether i should give away my desk lamp. it's an awkward shape to fit in a suitcase,

even for an expert packer.