Open the closet. Unearth your luggage, purchased because it was blue, back when it was new in 1989. Dust it off—you’ll soon use it. Cruise from room to room. Recall how spooky the house felt when you moved in, words echoing off walls newly stripped of flocked wallpaper. Now every nook is crammed with the detritus of decades. Scan your desk and discover notes for an abandoned dissertation, inchoate poems, lists of domestic tasks you may forgo forever if the little electrical fire in your wind-damaged deodar flares up. Or if the power lines in which its dangling branches are entangled come down. Retrieve only your laptop and charger, then check the family room, where your favorite bra is no longer lounging on the green chair. Survey every surface and find a shot glass filled with plastic sprinkles. They’d crept beneath your breasts while you swam in the sprinkle-pit at the selfie museum. Removing your bra that night, you released a rainbow. Search the bedroom, where still, the bra eludes you. Gather every pair of size 22 pants, clean or dirty, and collect that comfy skull tee you’ll likely wear to your grave. In the bathroom, nab the shampoo that keeps your coif from resembling a fright wig, then pause before a small painting of Norman Bates, hung outside your shower. If you and he are both still here tomorrow morning, he’ll greet you with his wig affixed and knife raised. In the meantime, pack your night guard. And wait.