I left nothing, as per the lease agreement. 

I saw a recent photo of a house I used to live in. The buyers repainted the whole thing, and now it’s a very dark, very loud green. I’d like to say it’s ugly, but it isn’t–it looks great.

But, man. I prefer the chipped, faded, horrifically 70s mint color I remember.

–

I left nothing, as per the lease agreement. 

The carpet was decades old, so it would be impossible to tell that I had cleaned it at all, really. But I did. I vacuumed up every speck of me. I pulled out every one of my hairs from the shower drain–a big, juicy clump of me, discarded. 

I took frames off the walls. I peeled a sticker off the bathroom window. I sprayed everything with a disinfectant so potent that I finally felt high enough to have lived in Boulder in the first place. 

I scrubbed the spot on the wall where I’d propped my feet up to read. I gave away the bamboo plants that I’d been watching sprout for 2 years. I gave away the desk I wrote to you from. I gave away the bed I slept in. I gave away pounds and pounds of clothing, and then I vacuumed up the lint. I swept the stairs–even the spot we always missed because it was in the corner of the landing and just very inconvenient to reach.

I gave away the sheet we projected movies on. I threw away the tacks we used to stick that sheet (against our landlord’s wishes) to the century-old wood molding. 

I gave away the bathing suit I wore to the creek–the one I wore when we stopped everything in the middle of an August Tuesday to sprint down there for some semblance of relief (there was no air conditioner to give away.)

We gave away our porch-couch–something I was far too old for, but something that I could rely on anyway. I’d nap there whenever I was locked out–something else I was too old for, but yeah, I could rely on that too. 

I still have my key–the one that for some reason worked on the deadbolt, but not the handle lock. (I made a fairly illegal copy because I kept getting locked out. Literally 2 bucks at Home Depot. Fuck em.) I still have that, at least. My little felony.

In that house, there were decades of books and art and photos and ephemera left by previous tenants. It was an odd situation–we had some kind of agreement with our landlord that if we kept the house full of tenants, and we always paid our rent on time, we could leave outside the dates specified in the lease. Essentially, if we found someone to take our room, we could leave whenever we wanted. So, we all left on a kind of rotation.

This meant the house was never empty. When one person left, there were five others who stayed–who kept some of their stuff–who would, ultimately, leave that stuff in the house when they left.

The house held on to a bit of whoever lived there. I thought this was very, very cool, and it was! Until I was part of the final few who had to clean it all out. 

We spent weeks going through old books and records and fuckin rocks and dried flowers that were abandoned years before we’d moved in. 

We spent weeks emptying the house of every single person who’d ever rented it. It didn’t seem fair–not just that we were the ones who had to clean their shit, but that we wouldn’t get to leave any of us there at all. 

I wanted to leave something so badly–some kind of recognition that I had, in fact, been there. That I had lived two and a half years of my life there. That I had cried there, in that room, on that carpet. That I had left that stain (and still got my full security deposit. Fuck em.) 

That I had sat on that porch and stared into that dark driveway and thought about serious and very silly shit. I wanted the people who bought the house to know I’d lived my life there. 

I saw the buyer briefly. He came in, snapped a few photos, and left. I don’t know him and I don’t want to. But I want him to know us–that we were here. It’s silly and I know that–renters move out every minute of every day and are contractually obligated to leave nothing behind. But this house was different, man. It was special to me. 

I don’t miss living there. After all this, I know it might seem like I do, but I truly don’t. Living with five people, and in Boulder in general, could be pretty unpleasant. But it was ours, dammit. It was mine. The decades of tenants who lived lives and left their shit there–it was ours. And I want whoever lives there now to know that. 

I love you, dear reader. 

Tons.