Allison sat on the floor of her cluttered bedroom. Clothes sat strewn in piles like haystacks in October. Papers and knick-knacks littered the floor like tickertape after the Fourth of July parade. What the hell am I supposed to take with me?

Allison was moving. Moving her head, moving her body, moving her life to a brand new exciting world full of...babies. Okay, so maybe it wasn't that exciting. Babysitting isn't the best job in the world, but it could be worse. Besides, she'd be working for her cousin, and pretty much living for free, so it'd be great, right?

Still the dilemma sat in front of her in all it's messy majesty. How do you pack for a three month stay? Should she bring her whole wardrobe? All of her possessions? Books? Allison wasn't sure.

As she sat looking at the infernal mess and two empty luggage bags, Allison sighed. Moving somewhere else is such a taxing chore. You have to decide what you need, decide what can be left behind, what you can buy when you get there, what's replaceable, what's not, pretty much what you can live without. Technically, she could live without almost all of her things. Did she really need to bring all of her yarn stash? How much frickin' knitting was she really planning to do? Is it really necessary to bring fifty tank tops? The summer is pretty much over now, days are getting shorter and nights colder.

What to do...what to do.

Allison leaned back against her dresser and stared at the ceiling. Hey, glow-in-the-dark stars. I could take those... Allison sighed again. Packing was too much work. Maybe she should just ditch everything, move three thousand miles with nothing but the clothes on her back and the crap in her handkerchief on a stick, and see how well she'd get by with that. Allison stretched out onto her littered floor with nasty shagged 70's carpet in shades of orange. This is something I won't miss. Mom really needs to do something about this shit.

Then Allison looked into her two large pieces of luggage. Two bras and a red sock in one, a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in the other. She bent down, took out the copy of Leaves of Grass, tossed it onto the bed and went to the dining room for dinner.

Change is happening again in my life.
The tides are turning and outside the door
I see the green leaves changing to colors of
brown and gold and red and black burnt umber.

It's summer now, but that only happens
once a year and then it is gone into
annals in my mind of times long ago.

I remember one time when I was six
and my sister and I went down to the
creek and we played in the water until
we got sick. Then we ran to our mom and
she made us some soup to warm our insides.

We're both diff'rent now, my sister and I.
We like diff'rent things, we eat diff'rent pie.
My sister and I, we like diff'rent things
but we'll always be sisters, my sister
and I.