This Is What You Get

How quickly life falls into routine. Runs towards it without a moment to stop and digest what was, and how abrupt the change. How can everything around me suddenly seem exactly the same, when inside I feel so different? 28 years of travel, and I haven't learned my lesson.

My warm skin has disappeared since I returned, tan lines long since lost to layers. I even sleep in long sleeves and forget what lies beneath. My hair is covered by thick knits, my fingers, my feet. My accent returns to its comfort zone, my pace quickens again to its familiar rush. The simple joys of new discoveries seem buried under a mound of gray snow. You can run forever but at some point you will be stuck in the slowest check-out line at the grocery store and a heavy dread will catch up to you. There is nowhere to turn. Australia feels a hundred years away and there is nothing to do but wait patiently and pay up when the register rings. You can never go back, only forward, onward, and hope that something just as delicious will appear around the bend.


I miss the feeling of you on my skin. I wish I remembered how it felt.