And there it was. The undeniable finality of a station wagon full of boxes, and cheap ikea furniture, and the crisp bite of a cool morning, just the way he’d imagined it the night before. They sky was cloudless, colorless, and he turned and looked at the city, the city that had been his city for four years and would soon be his city no more. It’s better, he thought that it should be like this, a colorless day, a blank canvas, the better to paint memories by, unspoiled by the filter of sunsets and dawns, or overcast so that the shadows deepened. But he knew that in his memories he would see this place behind a gleaming sun, all corners and angles glinting brightly, all the shadows swirling with the memories of days gone by, and that this place would always be his place the way that he remembered it and that his place wouldn’t even exist for anyone else save those lives he touched briefly. This city would be another city, filled with new people rushing in to fill the vacuum of old people rushing out. This city would be forever changed the moment he left, and when everyone that he’d ever known here was gone, this place would no longer bear any resemblance whatsoever to the one he knew, save for his name, somewhere in a great book in some forgotten library, lost amidst a list of the thousands of graduates that were turned out every year.

            “You ready?” his father said, pulling his age-old coat tighter around his neck and ears, against the cold.

            “Yeah, Dad,” let’s go, he said opening the door and sitting down in the driver’s seat. It seemed fitting somehow that his father had driven him into this city four years ago and that now he would drive his father back. He didn’t look back as he pulled onto the highway and a deep sigh filled his chest. He scarcely looked in the rearview mirror, because he couldn’t stand to see everything he was leaving behind, he couldn’t stand the thought of tears coming to his eyes in front of his father, who had never cried in front of him. He looked straight ahead and tried with all his might to let go of yesterday, just as Sarah had said that they all should, in her speech. He knew that a time would come later to open the dusty, brass cornered scrapbook of his memories and peruse them all, painstakingly one at a time. For now he would look forward and tried with all his might to embrace tomorrow.