meaningless–poetry:

THE UNROMANTIC TRUTH OF RUNNING AWAY

You take out the trash:
Old yearbooks, journals, and your pen collection from grade school.
You grab the giant bag you packed:
Clothes, toiletries, food for the next day, a towel, medicine, your laptop.

You turn around to look at your room one last time.
You feel nothing.

In the car, you blast
The pop songs you’ve memorized
And you sing along to ensure
That you continue to feel nothing.

You had skipped the goodbyes
To make things less awkward.
You kept calling this an experiment,
But by that you meant a mission.
Like watering flowers, you thought.
Cleansing and nourishing.

You bring the last bag
Into the new apartment and unpack.

You head to the store for some noodles and pasta sauce.
You turn around to look at your place for the first of many times.
You feel something.
It hurts how dim it is.
It hurts how quiet it is.
It hurts how different it is.
The dark wooden tables instead of the white ones.
The odd lamps that don’t quite match.
The bare walls that seem even more bare than the ones you left behind.

You come back and find
A Spotify playlist of pop songs to play
While you cook. It becomes your first tradition.
You glance at your phone,
Tempted to call someone,
Though not sure of who.
You decide to take a shower and watch a movie.

You always hated that “clean slate” saying.
Slates always had chalk marks
That couldn’t be ignored.
You were watering your flowers.
Complete cleanse, of course.

But those yearbooks are still
In a dump somewhere, far
From being decomposed.
Your phone contacts show up
Every time you call the pizza place.
You can’t forget home,
But home doesn’t miss you.