Faiqa is leaving in a week and I think I am dying.

This is not sudden and we are not unique, but it's late at night and I am sleepy and she is watching tv and none of it feels right. I don't want to waste a minute, after refusing to go for walks with her for years, after never managing to keep our movie plans, after thousands of door-slams and millions of throttling fantasies. Her size doesn't feel right why is she sleeping in the middle of the day why does she look so small how will she carry this what will she do when she gets lost and she gets lost so very often.

Seven more days and how will we know what to do what to wear what to say how to be? How does it feel not to know where we are what we've learnt how we've changed? How do we balance, each on our own? There is a suitcase she's filling up and I turn boxes over her bed and match earrings and we construct survival strategies for her but we do not talk about apartments and cars. We do not talk about independence, we do not talk about what we were supposed to do. We do not talk about whens, only ifs. And this is the hardest, this is the hardest part of leaving and I never intended for it to stretch over four long months.