A Goodbye

Most of all I will miss
this window,
that wakes me earlier than I'd like
and shames me into staying awake
with its view of the morning sky.
It's as though all that light flooding through
to stir me from slumber
was trying, more, to show me
all that it could see.
These walls, too,
starkly white and bare.
Not as cosy as my
multi-color room
or dorm walls covered in photographs,
but fresh, cool,
walls for the summer.
I will miss
other things too like
the glow of stone on the mall at night
and the eerie singsong repetition of
"Good morning" at the Metro stop--
I never found the source
but she sounded sad,
she seemed to doubt her words.
Perhaps miss
is not the right word;
really these are things I will only
remember. To miss something
one must feel its absence,
the way I would miss a pair of keys
or earrings when I've nothing to fiddle with,
the way I miss you
when I lie on an empty bed.
To miss something
is to mix strong memory
with yearning.
I leave little behind to yearn for,
here, but moments passed
that I now forsake, to see
why the window wakes me
tomorrow morning.

EWV