Another Go

Lately, I've been looking forward to transferring colleges, studying abroad, and getting homesick. I feel like the getting homesick part may sound weird, but some days I need something to miss, something to call to me and make my breastbone warm and sore. It's nice, sometimes, to yearn for something beyond yourself; a love, a home, something or someone that is so uncompromisingly out of your control that they push you to be your best self. That sort of place or thing or person has to stay somewhat foreign, though. I've realized that if you know he/she/it completely, then they've given themselves to you, they have surrendered, and as sweet as that is, today in the rain with nostalgia in my head, not knowing is beautiful because it's not something you remember, but something you hope.

Here's another poem that all just sort of gushed out at 4 this Saturday morning. Wander on.

While We're Here and Being Honest

Some days, I want to be beloved--

belonging to someone like their eyelashes.

I like the feel of taut arms around me,

of warm breath on my shoulder,

of fingers interlaced. Beloved, I walk

through strange cities with an internal

map; I glide over waves without knowing how.

But beloved, I am as I am

imagined to be: porcelain and flawless

and fragile. Beloved, I am handled

so gently I can't feel the hands there

and with such trepidation I never

know who walks by my side

with his arm slung heavy on my shoulder.

Some days, I imagine I am

yours, with the eye-catching

glance language of lovers,

the brush of your arm on mine

like the moon to my seas, calling

me out of myself. I think of my hands

in your hair at dawn, clearing love

and thought lines through the strands.

I think of scrambled eggs and

flipped pancakes and sliced fruit.

But I know your eyes don't darken for me,

and most days I think I love you better

in the ways I imagine you would be.

I imagine you would read this

and kiss my mouth, cradle my neck and back

to press me into you. But it's almost sunrise,

you are asleep across town, and when the sun

rises on our separate beds, it will catch you

in someone else's embrace, and I

in the softness of my skin.