Familiar Territory

I realize what it is. Reality sinks in slowly, reluctantly, and I am forced to glance at it and consider.

Perhaps I expected too much change; that the airplane, like a cocoon, would carry me across the water and I'd emerge in a brand new skin, metamorphosis complete. Instead, one day I woke up and was the same old insect as before. For months I could keep up the illusion that my attributes were glossy, shiny, that anyone who saw them would know that here was a person who'd found home and who possessed the streets as well as could only be done by those who belong. But the gloss begins to be tarnished, the slick leather scuffed, I am tired. My body fills up with unused potential; what used to drive me now amasses like an unending to-do list under my cheap manicure.

I retreat to comforts tried and true. Making friends with Sylvia Plath on the hard, carpeted floor of the Bookstore. The world is easier in poetry. You envy them their leaps off the edge and into literature. You are afraid of heights.

Smoke fills your room, you've been told to stay low in case of an emergency and now you're crawling blind, searching for exits. But the moments still come when you see the flickering of lights and the mad sparks flying. You are not ready to give up on them yet. One hand on the doorknob, you can still turn around. Dive head first, into the flame.