Last Day at the Lake

I wake at five, before even the loons begin their morning conversation.

Barefoot on the dock, I memorize the cold of wet wood against my soles,
knowing how I’ll dream this exact sensation
in some future bedroom, citybound.

The coffee tastes different on last days, sharper, more itself.

I count the rings my mug has left on the porch rail,
twenty-seven summers, maybe more.
My mother counted hers too, I bet, before she needed to let this place go.

By noon, I’m swimming out to the rock where I learned to dive.

The water holds me like it always has, indifferent to my grief.
I float, eyes closed, feeling how my body will remember
this specific buoyancy.

This is it. The moment that will haunt me.

Afternoon light through the sugar maple,
that same golden slow that’s blessed half a century of this,
reading in the weathered chair.

I sit where my parents sat, where their friends sat,
and watch the light perform its daily miracle one last time.

Emma looks up from her book and smiles.

She doesn’t know I’m memorizing her face in this exact light,
storing it like grain against the coming winter of without.

Evening finds me walking every room,
touching doorframes, windowsills,
the pencil marks that tracked our growth.

My spouse thinks I’m checking we’ve packed everything.

I’m not.

I’m saying goodbye to the ghosts.

The contracts are signed. Tomorrow, strangers will walk these floors.

But tonight the loons call out their ancient question,
and I answer with silence, with presence,
with the terrible gift of knowing this is the last time
I’ll hear them from this particular square of Earth
that made us who we are.

I close my eyes and breathe.

Pine pitch, lake water, old wood, the smoke from our last fire.

Somewhere, in a future I can’t see,
I’m opening them again,
trying to resurrect this moment.

Both women are me.

Both moments are now.