The last strip of tape sealed the final box, its sharp rip tearing through the silence like a full stop at the end of a chapter. I sat back on my heels, eyes drifting across the room—the space that had been mine for seventeen years, now hollow and stripped of memory.
Boxes lined the wall like soldiers, neat and lifeless. The walls, once plastered with scraps of me—drawings, notes, pictures—stared back blank and beige, like I’d never existed here at all. Just another name to cycle through the registry. Another girl moving on.
My chest tightened, and before I could stop it, tears spilled hot and sudden, splattering onto the scuffed wooden floor. And once they started, they didn’t stop. I didn’t sob, didn’t wail—just wept, letting it all fall out in silence.
Seventeen years gone in a blink
