Under a Black Rainbow

The house is emptier this weekend. We got the basement storage area cleared out; closets fully emptied of holiday dinnerware and old luggage, bedroom sets deconstructed into their base parts with box springs and mattresses wrapped up in plastic. The digital piano picked up and given a home with friends. We're closer to emptying this place, closer to closing its doors to us forever.  The sun was out today, shining bright in between weird bouts of microbursts all weekend long. The high window in the foyer soaked up so much of that brightness it was hard not to get caught up in the angles of the moment, the lines of the hallway reaching up into the vaulted ceilings, framing the sunlit vision in a perfect moment.  The house felt vibrant, alive. I wonder how much anthropomorphism I'm projecting onto things right now with the majority of my days and evenings spent in so much solitude.  I feel like I could walk this house blind-folded all these years on, like I know the entirety...

I've done this before, said goodbye to a house I called home for a decade plus. It's definitely different this time around, however.  This is the home I lived in while figuring out who I would be for the rest of my life. This is the home that has felt the most like a home to me. It has felt the most stable - physically, emotionally, and abstractly. It's been a great central locale for not only my siblings and I, but for the rest of our extended family as well. A place of congregation and comfortable space during the holidays. It's a place full of memories I'm actually able to recall with perfect clarity.  Though I couldn't tell you what it looked like when we first moved in. I remember being angry that we left Oklahoma City for Kansas City, a place that was equally named (seemingly lazily) after its own state. I remember being bitter for the change of scenery, for being uprooted and forced to adapt to a new city full of new people. For being forced to start over...