GBG

The city remains. It is rainy as ever, the wind cold and unforgiving but the faces are kind. The dialect sings through the crowds and their unpretentious clothes. My grandmother retells the same stories, the only ones seared into her memory that remain now, and I smile before the punch line because I know it too well not to. My friends realize they have lived in this same apartment five years, and me six, and I don't know where the years went. Weren't we just climbing those stairs with boxes and were all so hung over. 

Coming to this city used to feel so much like coming home. Like regardless my lost wanderings, this was a place where I had placed my trust and could sleep soundly. I've conquered new cities since then, grown and learned and I sleep pretty good in the apartment at the top of the hill now, too, I long for it even. 

But it occurred to me on the tram yesterday, crossing the bridge and seeing the little working class harbor town spread quietly over the hills, that the more places I conquer, adore, make my home, the more homeless I am in the end. 

Home becomes a watered-down notion I no longer have any chance to own. I grasp at straws, lose my footing. Sleep a restless sleep and wake up lost.