I’m Not Moving
by Linda McKenney

Between the ages of eighteen and sixty-six, I moved eleven times.

From childhood home to grandma’s house when I married

To first apartment

To a different apartment

To grandma’s house

To our first home

To an apartment when I got divorced

To the home of my second husband

To a twenty-four-foot recreational vehicle

To an apartment

To a home in Tennessee

Just the thought of this list exhausts me. But not enough to prevent the eleventh move.

From Tennessee to a home in New York State.

We loved living in Tennessee. I remember when we first arrived, knowing no one, I had some trepidation. We’d left a rich life back in New York. Could we recreate it here? I remember thinking, “If I die in Tennessee, will anyone attend my funeral?’

We did make friends. Lots of them. And we acclimated to a somewhat…

Moving was never easy
by Sunil Sharma

Leaving is always tough…because everything calls.

The walls that were dull and dreary now look different and

suck in with a force = the gravitational pull.

The rooms are stripped — just a jumble of concrete dimensions

and become again a structure of concrete-n-glass hulking over you.

The bare floors echo the lingering footfalls —  amplified, broken symphony of sounds varied

A tread here. A jump there. A skip over there.

A curving sound that ultimately dies down, once the doors are clicked shut.

Navigating the detritus of the past requires skill, patience, otherwise

one can trip, entangled by a protruding wire or the boxes, tiles and papers, forming a sea of crumpled memories, for the new owner/tenant to dispose/ clear.

The staircase, the windows, the uneven roads, the facades, the smog!

Well, every detail fascinates and matters; for the last time, the…