Disembark

We return from our travels never who we were when we left. The snow looks the same, the grey eyes in people's faces, the sounds. But you see something different around the street corner, in the conversation, on the horizon. The church has a strange glow as you climb the hill: the humbling beauty of a home to return to; the fading sense of having a home at all. You have always traveled, he says, you always will, and he is right, of course. But no longer is travel the terrified compulsion of a psyche in chains. It tickles me now, allures me, I long for its unimaginable awe and heavy sleep.

The apartment looks the same, the face in the mirror. My body falls quickly on familiar sheets, I am amazed at the life and the morning to come, the unexpected.

It occurs to me finally.
The trip is nothing like
over.