The apartment in the morning is quiet. The light comes through the east-facing windows in the particular way of light that is unearned, that belongs to the sky and not to anyone’s opinion of anyone else. I make coffee and take it to the balcony and watch the city do what cities do, which is proceed without reference to individual histories, indifferent and alive.
My student loans are paid. I have a travel itinerary for two weeks in Italy, printed and on the refrigerator, which is the kind of thing that appears on refrigerators when nobody else is making demands of the space. My tension headaches are gone. I sleep eight hours with the reliable consistency of someone whose nervous system has been returned to its default settings after years of being overridden.
The word that arrives most often when I try to describe the quality of my life now is mine. Not joyful, though there is joy in it. Not triumphant, though there was something clarifying about the foreclosure sign in the overgrown lawn. Just mine. My apartment, my schedule, my coffee made the way I want it, my Saturday mornings with no particular obligation to anyone’s breakfast.
