Swept

So this thing with you moving all the time, this thing with New York, what is it you are running from? she said. The office still reeled from vacation vibes, no one was working much. We sat barefoot on revolving chairs and talked about the future, instead. I'm not running, I declared, I just love New York, I want to go home. For once, speaking of other places on the horizon in terms of not being the endpoint of escaping someplace else, seems true. As though all my talk of the City genuinely stems from a sense of belonging and is merely the endpoint of a steady trek towards mental sanity and emotional stability.

But Sunday afternoon arrived with a storm, a pressure system building all across the coast and it stirred the fallen leaves in my apartment, stirred the dusty corners of my subconscious. I began to open drawers, sort out the unused trinkets, upgrade to a larger trash bag. I considered whether I needed half of the contents of my closet, whether I couldn't simply burn it all and start over. Just a month ago I was bringing old building blocks of a home into this small space and wished I could properly make it mine. Now the walls close in and lay bricks around my feet, make my dead skin cells itch with the ache for renewal. I want to molt, I want to leave, I want a plane ticket in my hand and the wind in my face, I want a white blank page and a land of boundless opportunity. I want my blood to rush madly in my veins, I want laughter to bubble in my chest, I want explosion of the heart.

I pretend I am not running away from Stockholm, from the frail tendrils of roots I have sent into this mountainside; I pretend this move to New York is simply what makes sense, that my heart is lonely without it. But the truth is nothing has changed.

We are forever running to stand still.