The temperature on the cartoon thermometer outside your kitchen window has already popped the needle off the gauge, and it’s only 9 AM.

The stars circle your head like you’ve been hit with a mallet. Still, you take a drag of the stagnant mist. The truck will be here in an hour.

It’s moving day. Men show up, but they’re boys to you: an aging hipster with a baby on your hip, a list of heavies in your hand. Everything is out of sorts and in boxes. These boys show up and bring levity, gut strength, and a whiff the outside world.

They tote dark blankets to wrap up your stuff – and it suddenly all looks like useless junk. You wish you could just throw it all away and start over. But they swim across your porch, through the kitchen, into your bedrooms and the basement. It turns out, you’ve used your abode as a clutter magnet far more often and for far longer than you remember.

But they continue. Disassembling, wrapping, lifting, arranging, rearranging, removing. For hours. Until somehow, the truck is full. “That’s it,” they say. And you agree. It’s time to move on.

But before you start your new life a few blocks away, you take that view, from the top of the tallest peak, where the Absence Of Things can be seen from all sides. You breathe a breath of freedom.

The clouds have rolled in. Rain is coming. “Take a break,” you tell the boys, who have treated your life’s possessions with tenderness and care, and who are preparing to unload it all into your new life, with your new porch and your new keys. But you know what their answer will be before you even ask.

They smile and grunt, grab a lamp or two, and get lifting.

It’s moving day. Nothing is broken. It’s just all in a different place now.