June 21, 1995

I stayed up all night, packing
my two suitcases,
thinking what to bring,
what not to bring.

I decided against the heavy winter coats
as if I was emigrating to a tropical climate,
and made room for white bed sheets,
a towel, a tablecloth,
and the steel flatware I bought
at the Russian flea market.

My cat hid in the folded laundry
and jumped out, making me laugh.
I couldn’t take her with me, though.

I remember sunrise through the windshield
and how my family stood at the gate
for a last photo:
my parents, my brother,
my brother-in-law and his wife,
my husband, even my other sister-in-law
we only saw at christenings
and funerals.

To be honest,
it felt like someone’s funeral,
an invisible corpse, hanging
in the air above us—

but I couldn’t quite put my finger
on who that was.

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-American poet, translator, and editor and author of seven poetry collections. She has won a Pushcart Prize, the Joanne Scott Kennedy Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia, is a founding editor of National Translation Month, serves on the board of The Red Wheelbarrow Poets, and co-hosts their monthly readings.