It was never my intention to dispose of my possessions.

It just happened.

One Thursday last month, I took the light rail home from work. Having finished my book over my lunch hour, and with nothing to read, I sank into a tired reverie, trying not to think about the legal briefs that filled my day, or my negligible status as a paralegal in a law firm’s hierarchy. When the train’s familiar mechanical voice announced my stop, I opened my eyes, gathered my purse and satchel, and headed for my bus.

As soon as I stepped off the bus, I realized I’d left the geranium on the train. Ordinarily, I’d be upset—berate myself for my carelessness, for money spent on something I would never enjoy. The Martha Washington geranium, its flowers a deep pink with white scalloped edges, had called to me from a rack outside The Wicker Basket as I strolled back from lunch. It was perfect for the tiny balcony I regally refer to as my terrace.

I wasn’t upset, though. In fact, something resembling relief flooded me when I realized I didn’t have it. Neither the wasted $9.84, nor my carelessness, mattered a whit. I felt lighter as I reheated leftovers from the night before, then later smiled through two mediocre sitcoms, before climbing into bed with a new book.

That night I dreamed of a young man finding a geranium—exactly like mine—and bringing it to his mother. How happy it made her! And him. It seemed as though some rift had been healed.

I awakened with an unaccustomed eagerness to enter my day. Putting my latest book in my purse for the day’s commute, I had a notion to search my shelves for another book, and tossed it in my bag, too.

I left that book on the bus with a fond pat, its cover shining expectantly in anticipation of a new reader. Again, I experienced the lightness I’d felt the previous day.

While drafting briefs, I also scanned my cubicle for something I might carelessly-on-purpose leave on my commute home. From my growing collection of coffee cups, I pulled a pink, thermal commuter mug. That would do nicely.

Over the next weeks, I left books on the bus and glass figurines on the light rail. I left coffee mugs on park benches and seashells at the base of a giant oak in the park. I wrapped a red woolen scarf around a statue outside the library. On the shelf bearing the Dewey Decimal System code 395.22—wedding planning—I placed two crystal wine glasses, tied together with a silver ribbon.

Nearly every night, I dreamt of people finding my former possessions, and in my dreams, they always made the finder happy, and usually another person, too. And I always awoke with a long-forgotten gladness.

My dreams, I realized, had changed. They were no longer a rehashing of depositions or contracts that had occupied my day. No longer interactions with heavily caffeinated, expensively attired attorneys. Best of all, my dreams no longer featured my parents—jointly or separately—advising, cajoling, and sighing. Always sighing.

Separated for years, they are nonetheless united in their determination that I be more than I am. My mother reminds me at every opportunity that with my knowledge of the law, I should apply to law school and then sit for the bar. “Top lawyers make ten times what you make,” she laments, leaving no doubt of her disappointment with her only child.

While my father would also love to see JD after my name and the salary commensurate with those lofty initials, he’s even hungrier for grandchildren, With the tone of a man placing an order for eggrolls, he instructs, “One would be fine, two would be better. Grandsons,” he stipulates, to rectify the cosmic error that granted him merely a daughter.

I grew up certain I was the reason for their frequent bickering and ultimately their split. I have never been enough for them. They have said nothing to disabuse me of that notion. They, of course, remain supremely confident of their own sufficiency.

My new dream subjects, though, leave me refreshed and clear-headed, eager to generate more of the same.

Soon, my bookcases were nearly empty and my shelves and dressers no longer bore treasures I had so carefully packed and unpacked each time I moved. My closet, too, contained a fraction of my previous wardrobe, as each weekend I brought bags of clothes to thrift shops or shelters.

Only once did someone call me on my trail of dis-possessions.

“Miss, you forgot your angel,” a polite voice pursued me as I was exiting the light rail. She was a girl of about ten who had been sitting quietly with her mother on the seats opposite me. She pointed to the porcelain angel I had left on my seat, its white robe and golden wings glimmering in the artificial light of the train, its face beaming with a beatific secret.

I smiled at the child, whose face mirrored the angel’s, “I didn’t forget her. I’m leaving her here for someone to find and make a home for. Perhaps you?” The girl’s shy smile broadened as I stepped off the train.

That night, I dreamed she gave the angel to her sister, making each of them equally and sublimely happy.

I dreamed I emptied my cubicle. Then my apartment. And in those empty spaces, there shone endless and dazzling radiance.

And from my tiny terrace, I spread my glimmering golden wings and took flight.