Positioned mattress pad on bed, said ‘here it goes, it goes right on top.’ It smelled like the Philadelphia apartment, Zachary’s and my bed. Thought ‘I didn’t bring sheets or pillows.’ Dad paused and said ‘maybe you should just get a new everything, a new bed, new mattress.’ I said ‘oh, well, this one is fine I think. I don’t know, maybe, I’ll see. Thank you.’ The thing I was feeling in the car of ‘what am I doing’ seemed amplified, thinking about how alone I would be when dad left, that this was my last moment of ‘at least I’m not completely alone.’ Hugged dad hard. His face was wet from sweating or the rain and he was wearing a blue windbreaker with a ‘Holland America Line’ emblem embroidered on it, from one of the cruises we went on when I was little. I hugged him and said ‘thank you for helping me with this, it means a lot’ and my voice broke. I was hugging him tight. He said ‘oh, I’m happy to help’ and it was quiet. He said ‘I think this time it’s really going to work out, it really is, just you wait and see.’

5:53pm: impulsively texted Zachary to see if he knew where to buy cat food, am now picking him up from Adam’s.

6:10pm: need to get electric switched over to my name, change address, feel hollow and scared and alone, driving, picking up Zachary, what will we do, what’re we doing here, what the shit hell…young family song came on shuffle…the fuck am I doing…

6:14pm: mint green nail polish has almost chipped off, I painted nails the morning I had been up all night and went to whole foods and Zachary went to nj before our apartment was all packed up, March

6:17pm: mom called said I’ll talk later parked on Zachary’s street ate 1mg Xanax shit fuck me.

6:18–11:59PM: zachary came out of adam’s apartment wearing nice clothes and with his hair tied back, holding a hand-rolled cigarette.

here is what i remember: