One. Go to the U-Haul store. They haven't run out of boxes yet. Get a few medium, a few large. Don't forget the tape.

Two. When you begin to pack, start with the largest items first. The blanket you watched the stars with. The letters. The books.

Three. Tape everything down. Don't let anything out. Tape it several times actually. Let him hold the box closed while you tape.

Four. When you can't fit everything in your tiny boxes throw the rest in the car. Pile everything in the trunk. Every photograph, every memory, every good day.

Five. When everything is gone, sweep. Be rid of any crumb, flake, dust, or morsel that remains. Sanitize each surface with antibacterials of course. It must look as if you were never there. We were never there. Now it is empty.

Six. Bring everything to the storage center. Remind him he doesn't need a 10 by 10. Load it in. Lock it shut. Now there are no possessions. Now there is just you.

Seven. Obsess over anything you may have forgotten. Focus on something. Did you get everything? You don't have gloves! You need gloves. Go buy gloves.

Eight. Write him a note. Rewrite it. Write it again. Try to say everything you'll want to say for the next few years. Repeat every memory from the last six months and write them down. Repeat. Make up the ones you'll never get in your head.

Nine. Drive to the airport but don't go inside. Stand on the curb. Give him a mask. Lysol wipes. Gloves. Suitcase. ID. Note.

Ten. Say goodbye. Hold him with every last bone in your body. Cling to his shirt. Try not to cry. Smile. Hold his hand for the last time. Plant a kiss on his lips. Remember his eyes. Draw them in your head. Run your fingers through that new haircut again. Kiss his ears. Kiss his nose. Hold him again.

It is hard to let someone go when you still love them. It is hard to watch conversations dwindle. It is hard to never hear him call you his star. It is harder to watch little pieces of us say goodbye every day. Because while the whole world is six feet apart he is one thousand one hundred and eighteen point five miles from you.

So take down your photos. Put those in a box too. Put away the letters. Fold up his shirts. Don't go to the places you went to together. They're closed anyways.

11. It is hard to let someone go when you still love them. Try not to love them anymore.

He gave me dead flowers
So I can smell them every day
The rotten petals falling
The color of decay

The washed out sunflower
The dehydrated leaves
The mold on the water
The color of debris

The richly red rose
Now drooping to the floor
The color of love
Existed no more

But still I saved the flowers
And smelled them every day
And watered them with tears
To let them grow again.

The vivid embrace danced across my mind.
These reveries were a hint of unreality of the world.
An instinct of indifference.
A product of soft-mindedness.
An infinite number of ramifications.
Yet, he had represented all the beauty.

dead lips notice corroding wishes
french hours singing infinite winters
romanticizing the energy of blaring reasons
sympathetic pieces worn saturated in emptiness
barely feeling broken snowflakes
pinhole breathing, busy restless hours
remembering sleeves of days
ironic twisting into the red of skin,
goodbye thursdays, goodbye nighttime and mondays, goodbye.

I awoke one morning, in the same spot as before. My bones creaked with the pain of staying in the same position, on your shelf with a broken doll and snow globe from last year’s ski trip, waiting, to be remembered.

When you were just a small child I would be on your mind, a game we would play with bare feet and fairy wings, you would close your eyes and say, “When I grow up I want to be… a Unicorn!”

What about our games of hide and seek? I would hide and you could seek, but I’m starting to think we’ve been playing the same round for years, but you quit and never told me.

You started grade school, worked hard and had friends. You were brilliant, a genius inside a tiny girl, you took the hardest math and didn’t care about being a nerd. You’d run with the boys and make them look slow, saying “When I grow up I want to be… a

As the years passed by we talked less and less, the heaviness of life starting to weigh down, I watched life knock the innocence out of your eyes, and push you to the ground, I screamed for you, please, just think about me, just remember, but you never seemed to stop. As the pain melted away and left you alone, bare, exposed, you walked away, still, saying “When I grow up I want to be… Happy.”

Growing up, I found a melancholy spring.
I often lingered in its belly
slept in its warmth
hid in its shadows
cried in its pools

I chose the life of guarded existence
Slipped over the surface of things
hid away in the shadows

Spring turned to summer and fall
melancholy froze in its place
and waited 'til next year
to crawl inside again

As I left the comfort of melancholy
I expected to find love
start from the bottom
look through endless rows
and found no sound but whispers.

Then there was a little stir.

I am generation Z. The post-9/11, children of technology. and
We are the kids that have become used to the idea of terrorism,
We're always told to be in groups of 4 or more and for girls to never go to the bathroom alone.
We may be free but we are held tightly by our fear, our freedom taken so quickly because we are afraid to make a change. We are the group of kids that have something to say but are drowned out by the sirens and the shouts and the prejudice and the too many opinions at once.
we are the kids who lie awake at night wondering why that plane is flying so low overhead. --

Our  hands shake for Boston, Our hearts break for colorado, Our tears fall for Orlando, and texas, and new york, and paris, and syria, and California and America, What are we doing? We have mouths that can speak words but our words do not speak volumes. The united states of America has become the divided states of America as we turn our backs on one another facing the same struggle.
We are Generation Z, the post 9-11, group that has something to say.... and We will not be silenced.


And I live in a world where schools have to have metal detectors.
I live in a world where there is violence on the streets.
I live in a world where bombings are a natural news occurrence and we wake up thinking that a mass shooting is a normal happening in society.
I live in a world where it's not okay to be afraid.
I live in a world where our people are divided based on political affiliations. We live in a world where we are followed by everything even offline with our hands over our ears the sirens can still be heard, and every 911 call echoes in our heads, and every cry for help is never silenced, and we hold our breath when airplanes fly over our heads.
I live in a world where the leader of the free world is no longer free himself.
and
I can sit and wait for the world to change but the world will not sit and wait for me.
United in our states of anxiety yet we stand alone. So far away in the corners of these walls but connected online through far away communications -- We can never get away. Everything follows us. Magnified as the magnitude rises, as every terror threat is followed through, as every muslim hides afraid of discrimination, united we are but alone we stand the united states of america is the divided states of america, and we are the future.
we are generation Z, and we are the future.