Get rid of everything, he says

The couple I've spent the last 6 weeks working with is leaving on Friday; the movers come tomorrow. I was on their kitchen floor today, digging out the archives of the cabinets – pots and pans dating back 30 years, more. She shook her head as I held them aloft. But the mushroom brush she’s keeping. The egg slicer. The plastic clips that fasten her freezer bags. The rabbit made out of shells that’s missing one eye. A box of dusty matchbooks. Meanwhile, her husband makes a grand sweep of his hand and gives a wry little smile. “Get rid of everything,” he says. “We don’t need it.” And I know what he’s talking about but of course he’s also talking about something else, and I feel the arrow of that instruction as I sort the piles and consider where the donations will go and how many pies the tins have left in them. They are hovering between here and there, these two, but soon the balance will tip and the light will change and the plane will leave and there will be nothing to do but hold onto the other’s hand as it lifts into the sky and takes them to wherever they know and don’t know they’re going.