I’m moving. And it got me thinking–maybe moving into and out of an apartment is like life.

Hear me out.

When we moved in here, we had nothing. No bed, no couch. And the overhead lights didn’t work. We never got around to fixing those. Day by day, piece by piece, we furnished this place.

I remember when we bought a lamp. I remember when we finally had a mat to dry our feet on outside the shower.

Then we hung art, put up pictures from our wedding. We got a cat!

Our dog bumped into our standing mirror. SMASH!

Guests ate at our table. Parents and siblings rested on our couch. And we fell asleep in each other’s arms here every night.

And now we’re moving. Did I mention my wife is a planner? We have to be out by the end of August, so of course every book I own needed to be packed in boxes by May 13th.

I just got home from work and my mattress is on the floor. Soon it will be gone too.

I’m cooking dinner, steak and broccoli, and there’s no knife; I split the florets from the stem by hand.

We’ll eat with plastic forks from a takeout restaurant. We’ll use flashlights to read in bed. And in a few days, there will be no trace that we ever lived here, ever loved here, ever were here at all.

And then we’ll be gone. And someone else will stand where we stood, will move into our space.

But was it ever really “our space”?