You pack up boxes- again- and stack jagged hangers by the open door. Some of your clothes are in bags, some are draped over random items. Everything is mixed, mingled and half missing like a jar of old buttons. And in the midst of everything moving, everything becomes frozen. 

Four years living with a friend worth gold comes to an end and it feels impossibly sad for the moment.

Time halts. Reverses. Freezes. Replays.

You clean the back stairs just like you did four years ago. 

You walk back and forth, back and forth, from the miscellaneous packed car at the dusty curb to the front stoop where you used to sit on the step, eating dinner and watching neighborhood kids shout and wildly race to the park. 

The disco ball still hangs from the ceiling of the front stoop. The electric red, blue, and green lights that used to mystify you since you never knew who hung it there or whose it was, or when it would turn on and spin fast, bizarre and wild for hours- now feels like home. 

You walk up to your neighbor's door and knock. 

He opens the door. 

"I'm moving," you tell him, "and I wanted to say goodbye." 

You know how warm greetings exist? So do warm goodbyes. 

/ / / / / / / 

I had lived there for an overflowing handful of artistic, constantly changing, lonely, free-spirited months, and now I was leaving. I walked back and forth, back and forth to pack my car tip-top full, by myself. Hours of a solo road trip lay ahead. 

I closed the door on the dark and quiet apartment. I walked down trails to the local coffee shop on the grounds to tell the barista I was leaving. I had to tell someone I was leaving and he was the closet thing to a pseudo friend I made when I didn't know anyone else there beside my friend.

"I'm leaving." I told him. "Right now." And by the way, I've always thought you are very handsome. (I never told him.)

He listened and said goodbye kindly and I waved to my sort of friend and walked back up the long hill to my car on the hot, hot day, with the navy river shimmering behind my back. 

After I said goodbye, I had peace to go. I wedged into the drivers seat of the small black car and perused the collection of mix CD's my brother had made for me before I moved. His handwriting looped in blue sharpie around the disks.

"Bon Iver - (mostly)"

"Girls"

"Ben Folds and Regina"

"Fernando"

"Random"

"Whitley and the Civil Wars"

"Andy"

"Classical"

I slipped a disk out of the sleeve and rolled away on the southern sun-baked roads. The soundtrack of change humming, the tires humming, my thoughts humming. 

/ / / / / / / 

The last box is packed, the front door is locked. The CD's my brother made for me all eight years ago is still in my glove box. And this time he is sitting next to me in the passenger seat. 

I shove and cram the backseat full to make space for him, glad to have company this time. He asks how I am doing. I tell him it is a weird day. I'm flooded with memories of moving and living in this place and feel sad. I turn the key. He grabs the case from the glove box and slides an old mix CD into the console. The soundtrack of change and staying the same. 

He skips through songs he picked out ages ago until he lands on "Still" by Ben Folds - and that's when he starts singing. And then I start singing. Ben Folds, my brother, and I all together melodramatic symmetry and muse.

I must give the impression 

That I have the answers for everything 

You were so disappointed 

To see me unravel so easily

It's only change

It's only everything I know

It's only change, and I'm only changing

You want something that's constant

And I only wanted to be me

You wanted something that's constant

And I only wanted to be me

But watch even the stars above

Things that seem still are still changing.

Still // Ben Folds