march 2021 i’m selling my bedframe on craigslist. a buyer offers to mail me a check to pay for the movers. I accept. bounced checks, scams averted by cash app, my bedframe thrown out on the street.

maybe i’m too trusting, gullible, or naïve. but, in the moment, I just wanted to believe it would be that easy to get rid of the bedframe. but instead i abandoned it on 9th street, with whatever other objects i refused to carry to 13th.

a year later, much of what I did carry filled the 13th. i regret leaving behind a lamp from when i was a child, but it had been reduced to a broken pole connecting a colorful trio of bulbous lights. on 9th, still standing, it slanted over the steeped floor.