At the start of school, everyone said they had moved out of their homes to come to Rhode Island. I didn't move much. Two suitcases: a few sweaters, sheets, New Balances, a bottle of wine that was finished in a week. Toiletries. My home was in Connecticut. It was close, so close that I didn't bring much. I didn't really move.

The first time I went home was for my cousin's wedding. She married her Hinge boyfriend on my aunt's farm in Pennsylvania. Dinner smelled like horse manure. I slept in my own bed at home the night before. Then, my dad drove me to the ceremony, past sorghums and fields of trees that were once farmland. My dad performed the ceremony, as he knew the most about our religion. The next day, he dropped me off in Delaware so I could take the train back to Rhode Island. 

After that first visit home, I grew more convinced that Rhode Island was different from Connecticut. License plates. Cannabis laws. An accent that approached the throatiness of Boston's. I thought if I could live in one state, it would be Rhode Island. I thought if one state could change me, it would be this one. I thought staying young in this state meant supplementing memories of sweaters, wine, and sneakers in Connecticut. So I went about accumulating. I went about making memories. 

I traveled home for Christmas and no one understood me. My sister asked why she saw my underwear above the waistband of my Levi's. My mother commented on my laugh, steadier and lower than before. My dad still lived in the past—bifocals, boat shoes, bourbon with a floating hunk of unmelting ice. He asked what I thought of Rhode Island. He hid a gift for me below the tree: a nice, durable suitcase.

I brought more with me the second semester. I learned I had more to take from home, so I put it all in Rhode Island. A family photo with a frame around it. A shoebox of letters I had received at summer camp. An ergonomic chair with wheels. I learned my way around my new city, my new state, Boston, the Cape. I rode the bus when I could, made friends where I found them. Called home when I had the time. 

I went home only once that semester, and it was for my grandmother's funeral. Back in Pennsylvania, I was again at my dad's childhood home. He's from that farm. He dresses now like his dad had before—my grandfather's dead, like my grandmother is now—but my dad carries on. He says there was a time when you could tool along the interstate, one hand on the wheel, one hand gripping a chilled Heineken. Everyone had convertibles. Everyone listened to the same music. All music was happy or about love.

At the graveside, my aunt gave me a charm necklace with a St. Christopher medal—the saint of motorists and travelers. When I was back in Rhode Island, I started to pray with it at my bedside. Prayer by prayer for my family, I signed my soul over to a new state, and I began to miss it over there. Connecticut wasn't all that far, but with each thought of it, I'd miss it more, and it felt farther. In all the time between visits, I collected. Memories, ideas, things—I gained things. Stuff that may never see or know a home. 

That summer, my room became a storage unit for my life away. I configured it—the stuff—in a way that made it easiest to pack everything up and ride back along the coast to Rhode Island. What had been time away became time on. What had been a return home became a departure. Even when I was in my Connecticut house, I didn't spend much time in my Connecticut room. I started to fear what I had been afraid of before: monsters under my bed, skeletons in my closet. I felt smaller. I spent most of my time at the kitchen table, seated between my parents. 

Within a week of the service, we took my grandmother's dogs. Now we have three. My dad loved to look at them. I couldn't—and it wasn't for loss or love or defeat. I only saw myself separating from them. I barely laid a hand on them.

I am moving out. I speak with my sister over the phone: We parse the words of our parents; we perform a postmortem of our Connecticut lives. The cause of death is bags. I've got so many. Indian takeout totes we held onto. Canvas beach bags I took from the garage. Those flimsy blue and yellow things from IKEA. I've kept hauling things up here, so all I’ve got are bags and so much stuff here in Rhode Island. I care to bring less and less back to Connecticut. There's less that brings me back, and "back" is increasingly nowhere the more stuff I move.

I've gone to Connecticut nine times since moving out. Each time I've traveled, I've noticed something new. A new stop on the Amtrak. I've stepped briefly onto uncharted station platforms just to see how they feel: Kingston. Mystic. New London, the submarine capital of the world. New Haven—I-95 follows a bridge above it that shines a different color every time I cross it. Red then blue then green. Southbound. I drive because I have a car now, and it's easier. A rest stop on the freeway—what my new friends from California call it—the highway in Madison, Connecticut. I stop and pee and grab a two-dollar coffee. My teeth turn yellow. I speak less and less like someone from here, now more like someone who left. I pay tolls by simply driving through. Traffic halts and accelerates, and then I'm alone and occupy the roads myself. Left lane speeding. The trip takes two and a half hours, but I do it in two. I pump gas—it goes quickly when you go fast. I talk on the phone with friends I leave behind as I head home. I send my family an ETA. I make plans for when I'm back. 

Connecticut extends the more I see. And home on the western end feels further the more I know in between.

I put my nice suitcase in the trunk. Just a change of clothes and a toothbrush. I am set for the night. I walk through my front door, and my dad is battling our dogs' eyes with his own. They're on the floor like forgotten toys.