inventory.

My apartment is a castle this month.

Parapets of cardboard cemented with packing tape. Balconies of storage bins against the windows. Buttresses and spires and belfries of art stacked like puzzle pieces, one frame inside another inside another, chimera paintings. The head of my childhood dog on the sketched body of a dragon. The skeleton of a crow flying across Ireland.

There’s not much left now, in terms of things. Every morning, I cross off another calendar day to when the castle will be disassembled, every brick dragged down the stairs, placed in someone’s car, or someone’s basement, later to be hauled up different stairs and reassembled. A different order. A different blueprint.

I’ve seen where the boxes will go. Two months ago today I signed the lease. Guaranteed my existence for the next year. Confirmed what the new castle would look like. It’s an eight minute walk down the street, I tell people when they ask me. I can see what will be our new porch when I walk home from work. It’s comical, actually, when I think about it. All this effort for the same zip-code. The same commute. The same parking spots. The same restaurants.

I’ve designed it in my head a hundred times; staring at the boxes bricking what is for this moment my bedroom, I’ve put the pieces back together: the dresser against the back wall, the bed opposite, another set of curtains for a third window, desk set up to look outside. I’ve mapped out a dozen configurations for shelves, how many holes I can reasonably poke in walls that are only mine for as long as I want them to be, or until rent increases, whichever comes first; how many books fit on which shelves; what height makes the most sense for stacking? For access? For aesthetic? How much will I change? How much will I put back together from habit?

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I take stock of where everything is and which boxes hold what pieces of me: Books in the closet. In the hallway. Under the bed. Figurines of cats in the kitchen. Stones smuggled off the beach when I was thirteen in the living room. Art supplies. Postcards. Post-its. Clothes. Plates. Bedding. I want to account for everything. I want to be sure I’m not missing anything.

Other times, when I can’t sleep, I take stock of other things. Other places. Other things I’ve seen. Today: A video of a caravan of people, so many people, their whole lives loaded on carts and trucks and into bags and onto backs. Children carrying their parents. Ghosts carrying the sky. The people move in an organized chaos, away – that’s the only direction to go. Away. They’ve done this before. They did this yesterday. They will do this tomorrow. They move because they have to.

Because they know what is behind them.

And before them.

And above them.

And below them.

Under their feet, the Earth is turning and soon they’ll be back where they were this morning [repeat repeat repeat].

The person filming stops a man in a blue shirt. Asks him something, what he’s running from maybe? Where he’s going? The man points behind him, offers some kind of answer, and presses on. He doesn’t have time to explain what they’re fleeing.

He shouldn’t have to.

We should know.

A truck honks – at another vehicle? At the people in its path? Even it sounds like it knows it won’t get through. Everyone is going exactly as fast as they can, and none of it feels fast enough.

There’s always something that can move faster.

A woman with her daughter, holding tight to each other’s hands. They trip through a crater in the road and, just for a moment, the woman lets go – just for a moment – to fix her hijab – just for a moment. In the next moment, her hand is searching again for the girl’s – horror until there is contact again. They are two feet apart, neither ever leaves the frame, but they cannot be separated. Even a second is too much.

A little boy with a box.

A tractor with a family.

A man leading a little girl, looking behind them – for someone? For something? For anything other than what he sees.

A trash bag left in the middle of the road.

A woman sobbing, tearless. Loud. A sound that knows it’s not the first of its kind. A sound that knows it’s not the last. A sound that hears its own futility and cries out anyway.

I take inventory. Of what I can see. Of what I think I should see. Of what should be there and isn’t.

And I look at my boxes. And I look at my calendar. And I check another day off the year, not quite sure what I’m actually counting towards. Just knowing it feels right to do it.

Read more from mypoetmuse and project creator, Matt Cantor @Gaza_Closed_Captions