to my Hometown.

It's like you could leave at any moment, like you could disappear without warning. I know that's what you do. How hesitant the words when they came, we sat in the dark night smoking into open windows, winter winds flooding the apartment and I stared across the street trying to find another truth in the sleeping apartments that lay there.

I'm buying time, I thought. I'm spending my savings until the answers are clear. 

The mornings are light now, birds mad with the impending season, people line up along walls and gladly let themselves be blinded by the sun. An entire spring spreads out ahead of us, the coming of brown skin and warm waters, of feeling every cell within burst of joy and adventure. The apartment at the top of the steps is mine for an entire sunny season if I want it, my puppet master has played his final hand and I am left with all the cards in a pile. I have decided to stay, I tell them, and their smiles make my skin itch.

To choose one thing, is to not choose another. I choose this. I choose this.

I'm buying time.

I'm not going anywhere.