First night in a new space

It’s funny calling a space that doesn’t smell like you home.

This apartment doesn’t smell like my home. It doesn’t smell like me. The air smells like someone else, like someone else’s home.

The cat is panicked. She doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t think this is some great adventure. Her mind is set to going home, to sleeping all day, slipping outside in the evening, and running the block all night.

She won’t eat. Her water is untouched. Genevieve paces the apartment once, then once again, then hides under the bed, perches by me in bed.

Adam and I have just moved into a new apartment together. Nothing is unpacked; the apartment is stacked with boxes and bags. Delivery pizza sits on the table. We have a DVD of “Are You Afraid of the Dark” playing on my laptop.

The front left of the couch lacks a foot and an abridged version of Gibson’s Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire currently supports it.

Exhausted from moving furniture all day, we plan to eat, move a few things out of boxes, then try to fall asleep if the cat doesn’t spend the entire night meowing, plaintive and afraid.