Sign up for the best newsletter EVER!

It’s a hell of a thing to know

that once you have to move,

you can never come back again.

That this is the last place you will ever live,

in San Francisco,

the City

that you love and that you’ve given so much to.

Having already chosen a life of semi-austerity

where you skip many modern comforts

like washing machines,

and dishwashers,

in exchange for the low rumble of Mission Street mornings.

To live like you’re in a perpetual state of being a college student,

in the sense that,

you reside amongst mini generations of other people’s stuff.

Mixed matched spoons and cutlery;

a revolving door of roommates and their things.

Often times no one knows or remembers

where these droplets of ephemera even came from,

but now they are part of the house

and essentially part of your life,

because you can never leave.

Living in San Francisco,

and having rent control,

has become a sort of golden handcuff.

If you ever need to move,

or get evicted,

you have to essentially trade in your San Francisco citizenship.

The Visigoths are at the gates

and will gladly take your place,

thinking that they’ve moved into something special,

without realizing,

they are pushing out the specialness like spin art.

You are the drops of paint that make the color,

but the faster things spin,

all that’s left,

are the streaks showing where you used to be.

Like this piece? It’s in a collection of some of my best writing called Love Notes and Other Disasters. You can get it here for only $5.