Today would be the last time I’d step into this apartment. He was moving out, unsure where. I first looked into the bedroom, the only one in the apartment, the bunk bed across from the king sized bed was gone. 

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“Where are my stuffed animals?” I asked. 

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I was told they were already donated. I wasn’t given the chance to go through them, to decide which ones I wanted to keep. That’s okay, I guess, they weren’t my favorites anyways. I don’t remember picking them out in the first place, rather they were presented to me, this is what I would receive. But it wasn’t lost on my eleven-year-old self that I wouldn’t see them again, my quiet companions who lived at the foot of my bed, who watched over me while at the apartment throughout my early childhood.

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The nauseating, burning smell of vinegar throughout the apartment was still present even during this final visit, even with bookshelves and the dining table we never ate at missing. I never knew where this smell came from, perhaps cleaning products or mildew or a mix of the two. I was brought here to say my final goodbye, but I wasn’t sure what I was leaving – a place where I lived every few days, where I kept myself quiet and watched too much TV. A place of familiarity, I suppose. 

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My office, what I liked to call it, was gone as well, cleared out to expose the empty back corner of the living room. It was really just a children’s play table, but it was mine, to be taken seriously. When I wasn’t on the couch, I was there drawing and writing stories. Each finished product was carefully filed away at the bottom drawer of my plastic storage unit. My crayons and markers and colored pencils were organized in the more narrow drawers above, rubber bands separating them from each other. I cut out my favorite Sunday comics, glued them to cardstock paper, and pasted them on the window. I imagined this was typical decor for an office, along with nick nacks and my piggy bank and a cup of pencils and pens that lived neatly on the desk. 

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I was gifted an encyclopedia of dogs, my favorite animal and hyperfixation, for my birthday which I used to research new breeds and write reports that I’d tape on the walls. Life expectancy, weight range, breed characteristics, common health conditions, and so on. Even though I was allergic and having my own dog was off the table, I watched dog training shows on Animal Planet. I knew the steps and hand commands to effectively teach a dog to sit and stay and lie down and roll over. Theoretically, ready for when the time was right.   

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The large white board next to my desk listed the names of the 12 dogs I was told I would have in the near future, my allergies to spontaneously disappear when we struck it big, their names and breeds, alongside drawings of how I would decorate my promised bedroom. All light pink and cream with a window seat overlooking a quiet neighborhood. 

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It was all gone – my table and file cabinet and white board and pens and paper – under the assumption they would leave with the apartment. So be it.

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The adults talked behind me as I walked the perimeter of the apartment, studying what was left. Despite years of living here, what was outside of my office felt unfamiliar. Photographs in boxes covered in dust, figurines I didn’t know the origins of. The opposite corner to my office, typically canopied by a potted ficus tree, was now empty, exposing a corner window. I never sat here before, kneeling on my shins and dust bunnies by my side. 

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The apartment was at the edge of the complex, up on a hill with no other building in sight, and on the second floor amid a sparse forest of eucalyptus trees. Through their branches, the corner window overlooked a freeway, cars rushing by to mimic the steady static of crashing waves. 

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My newfound vantage point, like that of a princess in a reclusive tower overlooking her forest of dusty leaves, unearthed a warmth and intrigue that all felt too little too late, a nostalgia for what wasn’t and remorse for it never happening. 

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What would I have made of this corner? Maybe I would have been brave enough to ask for my office here, to play in my tower and compile my reports and write my stories to the sound of the water on rocky terrain just below my secret garden. Or a bean bag and pillows and blankets where I could watch raindrops race each other to the bottom pane on a stormy day. Maybe I’d opt for an unobstructed view, without comics taped to the window, unafraid of the monsters living in the eucalyptus trees. But it would never be mine, a tightness welled in my throat that I pushed into my lower stomach. What else is there to do?