“The point of migration is the return.”

The Poem

How to Move Away - Joyce Pedersen

It's best to wake early, four, five a.m., while
the neighbors sleep and the moon floats
like a pearl in a pool of ink. In half-light
the empty house is less familiar, less sad—the walls
with their nail holes, the carpet—its patterns of wear,
curtains with no job to do. I sit
on my suitcase, eat powdered donuts;
a napkin for a plate, juice out of a paper cup.
Make one last check of the cupboards,
the drawers. Run my hand along
the countertops, the stair rail, trace
the walls with my fingertips, each scar
proof of my childhood, my initials
carved into the tree of this, our sixth house.

My family could write a Handbook for Leaving—
the way we pack up during summer solstice,
disconnect from people and places like an abrupt
shutting off of electricity. My father's convinced himself
that the unknown is always better, the way the retina sees
images upside down and the brain corrects.

Here I smoked
candy cigarettes, my breath in winter passing
for smoke, pale green of my bedroom. I counted
the number of intersections on the way to school (four).
I bundle memories together, weight them with stones
like unwanted kittens drowned in a creek.

What kind of animal constantly moves?
The point of migration is the return.
We're nomads without the base knowledge
of where to find water. These moves are
like arranged marriages; economics now,
love later. Maybe it's not against nature
to move. Most of the body is no more
than ten years old and blood renews itself
every 90 days. But leaving disturbs the fabric
of a place. I'd rather stay and witness change.
My mother always wanting to plant perennials
that we never stay to see. I pour some water
on the marigolds clattering around the mailbox,
Aztec flowers of death, their strong scent
a beacon to lost souls. Then we drive away,
the blank windows like the blank eyes of
the dead, waiting for someone to seal the past with a penny.

The Beverage
Sun Tea

Do you have a lot of tea in your cabinets? Are you in your late 20s and finally figured out that it’s better to get rid of all your stuff before you move instead of throwing it into a bunch of random bags when you panic? Are you losing your mind and forgetting to send your newsletter and totally missing the yoga class you registered for and realizing your master’s thesis is due four days earlier than you thought it was? Are you so persnickety that you have packed and purged the same things over the last week at the detriment of the rest of your packing?

If you are, that’s odd because that’s what I’ve been doing. Having that much in common would be really really bizarre.

But as to that large amount of tea -- I am making sun tea. A lot of it. I am going to use up as much of this tea as possible in this next week and a half.

One tea bag per one cup of water. Glass pitcher. Put in the sun. Forget about it. Remember at some point. Remove tea bags. Drink tea. Donezo.