South Island

Land back in a capital town and recognize her face instantly in the street. Three countries in three weeks, you weave in and out of each other’s lives, what a comfort. Her apartment looks the same, this neighborhood looks the same, I lived in a beautiful little morsel of space at the foot of this hill, on the street with the church, I know I stumbled but oh, how the sunrises sang to my confusion. I ran along the water in the late afternoon and remembered a time when this was home, and what a sweet gift it was though I hesitated to unwrap it. She writes from the Californian coast and you both caress the insight you’ve built in the space between your time zones. Do I want too much when I have so much already? she says, and you wish for her more than her heart could ever know to desire. You don’t owe beautiful things to stay with them because they have been good to you. She buys me another beer and we wonder how life deposited us here, what we make of the tickets we were given. I speak half sentences and she knows just how to finish them: this is family. 

I sat on the train today watching a late summer landscape unfold around me. This land which is my home and yet to which I no longer belong, we could stare at each other and make amends with the heartache we’d caused. I scribble in notebooks: all I ever wanted to do was write, and it’s true. I miss home so my heart aches, there’s a hole in my heart where you used to sit, there’s an adventure in my blood stream that makes my skin tingle, and it’s true.

This life is short, and fleeting, and beautiful. I’d take this heartache over complacency, every damn time you asked.