In some ways, it was nice to be the one leaving, instead of the one being left.

Lumba is in me as much as I am in it. If I stand at its beginning, I can map each of my memories to a corner of this dying town.

Home—a peeling, moldy brown, single-family house.

Family. I inhale, holding in the stories building up inside me.

My first ice cream—vanilla, swirling, dripping down my chin, my tongue chasing every drop. Birthday parties in the park. A homemade chocolate cake with a warped number 10 candle.

Mom and Dad, holding me, faces colored with laughter—as if our lives were not unraveling too fast.

I see myself swinging, gripping the chains tight, wind rushing through my hair before I fly off—face-first into the ground.

The soft, padded floor could not protect my two front teeth from breaking and a lifetime of scrapes. I’d think about this anytime memories of Dad resurface.

Home is always going to be here. But the bad overshadows all.

“Oh, this is so pathetic,” Lola, my best friend, the one person I hate to miss, laments. Her voice jarring me back into my room. Lying down on my king-sized sheetless bed, remnants of tears on her face, protruding belly facing up.

You’d think she was about ready to deliver. But she is to be a mother to two big boys.

Lola is the love of my life. Not in any romantic sense. But in the way when your soul was sure it met its match. She is the one stayed through the changes life threw at me. And I stayed through hers too.

We’d met the day I’d fallen off the swings. I had been watching a group of kids play with one another while I was forced to stay with my father.

And once I fell, everyone stood mouth shaped like O. But Lola came running to me, crouching to see if I was okay. Her toothed smile brightening me up. She refused to leave until the ambulance came and to my surprise showed at the hospital with flowers, balloons and my chocolate.

Promising always to be there. The promise rings true on her side. Realization settles that I will miss so many important moments of their lives. The day she births them, being there to watch them grow, fall, and get back up, and watching her be an amazing mother.

“I am crying out of my eyes here, a hot mess. You’re sulking in Lala Land. We are supposed to be happy, enjoying this moment, or at least throwing a pity party. Ugh,” Lola cries some more.

“I think it’s your hormones. I didn’t know you had so many tears in you. You didn’t cry this much when you lost your favorite cat.” I joke. “Besides, we are both hot messes.” I stop, not knowing how to make us feel better.

“Why does this win feel like such a loss? I was so, so happy to go, now there’s a gaping wound in my heart that might never heal.” my voice raw as if I had been the one crying.

I look over to half-packed suitcase waiting in the corner, I decide not to take too many things. Whatever I leave here was up to Lola to use and give she sees fit. My reluctance sitting on its heaviness.

I look around trying to memorize the white walls of my room. Everything had been taken down. Its emptiness reminds me of my first time in it. Why did my last day feel like my first day? As if I did not grow 18 more years in this room.

I have always felt the itch to step outside the bubble. I wanted to see the world, what’s outside waiting for me. To live. Now I had no choice. I was living the consequences of my action, everyone was.

Once I leave it behind, Lumba becomes a forgotten place in my mind. Lumba, a forgotten town with forgetting people, no, dying people. It’s my duty to hold it close. To bring them to safety. To keep us living.