Upon Your Shore

Every morning I wake, too early, with a panicked feeling in my lungs, and do not know where I am. Feel the window fan across my feet, hear the dog pacing outside the cardboard door, fit the pieces together until the image is clear. She writes to say that they are sailing around the world but are landing in the city for a week and would you like to come out to play. You consider stowing away in their boat, instead. He writes from Morocco, but you've dulled your senses now, and you refuse to paint the pictures in your mind.

I return to the little room on Morton like an inert whirlwind, desperate to commit but perpetually torn from its comforts, rasping my nails against dresser drawers and crumbling walls at the gusts. You belong here, they say, but you don't know what it means to belong anywhere. Some days you think perhaps you don't actually need to.

Always keep your bags packed, your storages cleared. Never be weighed down by the comforts of a familiar bed. Run madly into the world and live to tell the tale. Perhaps happily ever after, is a sacrifice worth making.

Burn everything
to
the
ground.