My Place

I didn't say a formal goodbye to my graduate university. I wasn't really sure when it was the last day. I kept remembering teeny reasons to go to campus--more annoying than sweet (return this key, drop off that book). And then suddenly I was moving, and I wasn't going back. But the day before I drove out of the desert I went to throw away my v old tennies and remembered the shoe recycling program in the gym. I had long cleaned out my locker, but I swung by, less than a day left in the state, just to drop the old soles into the bin. And then I almost cried. I got a theatre degree, and yet, I will miss that gym a dozen times more than any black box. This is the place I trained for marathon number two and where I spent hours on bikes reading Atlas Shrugged before classes started when I had no homework or friends.  This is every 6 AM my first spring before I had an iPad when I had to settle for closed captioning of that dumb Amanda Bynes sit-com. Backstroke with palm trees smiling down. Step class that launched me into graduation. Midday showers on the hottest of hot full days. Every Wednesday on ellipticals reading my peers' plays. Those Saturday nights when I was a single girl trying to get a lift workout in before close. Those Sunday mornings ramping up adrenaline before improv rehearsal. I swallowed because I had so much more packing left and I'd been doing pretty well not crying.

Open road, leaving AZ.

Sometimes I find myself shakin' in the middle in the night

and then it hits me and I can't even believe this is my life.