Trained

Ride the bus early, with only the long-way commuters bumbling aboard, resigned to a life of long journeys and early mornings. They're all wearing autumn clothes and a determined frown. You realize the time may not be right for you to move back. For the first time in years, this insight does not cut deep inside your chest like it always did before. Get a brief moment alone on a train, think how you should be working but your entire being says you need to sit still in silence and see only the landscape pass by outside your window. 

An old couple in front of you discuss the towns you pass. She says, You know this town. You used to change trains here every day. He looks out and says, I did? but it does not appear to pain him. He forgets where they are going. Something about how life is short and long all at once passes by your internal field of vision, you realize you have more stories to tell now, you long for the neverending silences that the West may bring and the words that might appear with them. 

You long for things you do not know the names of, yet. 

Look at New York City apartment listings, look at houses in New Mexico, look at weather reports for any manner of worlds, 
feel nothing
but free.

Rönnäng

Find a familiar face on the familiar square, everything frozen in time except the worlds of wisdom that lie between you. Take the commuter bus out of town, past the throngs of people, see the city give way to rolling hills and late-summer greens, valiant flags braving the autumn chill even as the humans wrap themselves in more layers. 

A new house, a new promise, crooked floors and dated wallpaper, endless potential hidden within the folds in the old fishing village. Late in the evening, we bike down to the cliffs and dive into the water, no one there but the birds and one misguided jellyfish. The sun sets in that melancholy way it does in the North, just before the season ends. You pretend not to see it, revel only in the salt water on your lips. Bike home with a chill on your skin, adore a freedom you know only in memories, sleep like you never knew fear, 

there is something here, an answer telling itself to you in parts, you begin to piece it together,
believing at last
that you might.

August

Days pass in a blur, you forget where you begin and end and think perhaps you exist only in the eyes of those who’ve loved you for decades. There is no greater gift than to be seen and loved in spite of it. 

The summer comes to an end, but it trudges on with its last powers, you do not resent it, somehow. Perhaps you have something to prove, but for a short minute, it is irrelevant. They already know. 

Eventually you will have to return to New York, you think. 

You can not live your life only

in the eyes of others. 

Islands

The boat won’t go in the choppy waters, he yells from across the bow. A storm moves in from the west, floods the little city on the coast. We run to a bus instead, drag bags to a car barge and find another bus to take us to the edge of the island. Here it is, the endless sea, rages against itself, against cliffs and houses that have weathered its incessant tumult, you cannot ruffle the inhabitants here. No man is an island, but these people know what it takes to be one, they remain steadfast. The food is delicious, the hostel quiet on a cold august evening. In town, the festival begins. Do you remember when it began? You heard Regina Spektor revel from the other side of the woods. 

Do you remember who you were then? It seems impossible, now, to imagine. So young, so full of why does everything happen across the other side of the woods. I’ve come a long way since then. 

I have so far still to go. 

When they ask you to have a home you say, take a deep breath, remember how you know me. I am a heart full of woods, I am a life full of one day I will go through it, 

And sometimes that day

is today. 

En train

The train rolls out of the station, early morning but still well past dawn, eager Stockholmers making their way to work after long vacations and resigned endings. It feels like fall. People on the platform wear sensible wind jackets, I shiver in my bare legs and wonder what happened to summer. Think in New Mexico it is endless, still, and the thought warms me even as I feel stretched across the continents, torn at the seams.

Late at night, the evening before departure, I could not sleep. Tossed and turned in all the large questions, while counting down to an alarm clock that didn't have to ring, I was out the door all on my own. Oh, but life is sad, and strange, and beautiful, you feel tendrils of home bury themselves on her borrowed balcony, look out over a water that once belonged to you, look at the children you should be knowing better, you feel home bend itself into bus seats and subway trains and the familiar tint of people's hair and accents. You know traveling twists your lenses beyond distortion, know that if you lived here you would always be slightly askew, know that New York feels like your spine aligning, but 

oh,

In the late nights that refuse sleep, in the quiet, sandlime brick houses along a cross-country railway, in the cool crisp water of an evening swim, and the melancholic wringing of a heart already inflamed, you allow yourself wonder. What if this was home, and I'd never have to wander again, 

It's a thought too to big grasp. I nap no the train, instead, look forward to another reunion and another question of it this what it is to be humnan?

The answer I'm only just beginning to fingure out.

Rodeo

Your bags lie half-packed, clothes strewn about the room, your life in shambles, shards of people you might like to be. An airplane ticket sits in your pocket, it makes you feel calm, safe, right. 

You realize now when they ask you questions, none of your answers will suit them. You are homeless, now, you do not know where you will be a month from whenever they ask you to clarify your plans, they cannot grasp you. They've known you this way before. They've lost you to the whims.

This, too, feels right. 

So you are not sorry.

Echo Lake

Climb the mountain pass, morning warming into hot July day, so few remain, navigate treacherous terrain around unknown corners and deposit at the foot of a lake. I hike through forests that look like those of my childhood, find the flower that gave me my name, listen for bears but hear only my own breaths, I am the only person for miles.

The fears grab me, too often they sit me down, take the muscles from out of my legs, the voice from my throat, keep me locked in the confines of a beloved home. But some days I put them in the backseat with me, say you can come but you cannot say anything, some days I drag myself across the coals of their eager hands and dare to look at what's beyond their horizon. 

I came home tired, happy, trekked out to the creek and sat staring at the moving waters. Count down minutes till farewell. But I am free, and when you are free, 

no goodbyes really hurt
quite so much.