what does goodbye look like to you?

by Anna Jankowski 

Goodbye is a MetroNorth train leaving Poughkeepsie
after a July weekend with my dad

the house is nearly empty
he pesters me to sort through the last of my belongings in the 1500 square feet
while I put it off he tells me how he is ready the house has to sell
it is too painful to be all alone
he needs to be with my mom in Cleveland
“I don’t do much on the weekends. All of my friends have moved away.”

My aunt tells my mom he is depressed
I reassure my mom that it is just a transition and besides,
isn’t everyone in New York a little lonely?

most of my friends have left:
left for Pennsylvania
Florida
Nebraska then Utah
Ecuador

At dinner, my uncle is both at home and mournful
savoring the three hundred year old stone houses and clean tap water
Lubbock isn’t the same
he says you can feel that it’s thriving but…

after dinner we drive to a park along the Hudson
through winding streets
along bent guardrails brown with rust
and dilapidated buildings
my dad and I marvel that only about half of them are condemned now
my aunt asks,
if New York is such an important state, then why is it so backwards?
breathtaking and unlivable

we try to plan our next trip to Chiapas
my aunt tells me her family still asks about me
how do I feel more at home in her country than my own state?
or in a backyard in rural Pennsylvania
a hostel in Ecuador
the passenger seat on the highway between Del Rey and Miami
the three-story townhouse in Cleveland
what is home anyway?

is it still goodbye when you can’t even speak?

when you are on your way to Spanish Harlem for your friend’s farewell party before she leaves for Oregon then Puerto Rico
and you remember the mural on 117th and 2nd Ave of Chiapas
all the times you walked past it when you worked two jobs in college
stressed and depressed
in the dead of winter
but when you saw that mural you had a moment of happiness
because you were taken back to the warmth of a rooftop in San Cristobal that felt like it could be home
and as you approach the corner
there is only a lot with rubble
where the mural was supposed to be

gasping

Goodbye is quiet, hushed
it’s flipping over the price tag in the new vintage store
before exiting empty handed
it’s searching for jobs that don’t exist

it’s your friend telling you if her rent increases 2% she won’t be able to afford Queens anymore and texting you when she discovers her company offered her salary to the new male intern
it’s a bankrupt shopping mall
and empty Manhattan storefronts

it’s spray-painted swastikas
it’s a flat, rectangular apartment complex shoving its way between brownstones

it’s opening the door to your grimy, falling apart nonprofit job in Brooklyn
to find residential permits and a lobby with marble tiles
that don’t quite line up

closing schools
and shrinking congregations

it’s reading the FBI statement detailing the drug bust of 20,000 lethal doses of fentanyl in a town of 4,000
and picking out the names you remember from the school bus

the fresh paint on your best friend’s house that was foreclosed on
It’s sitting on the MetroNorth train leaving Poughkeepsie wondering if you made the right choices

as if there were choices in the first place