Rootless
Some days I swear I’m walking,
not on earth, but on the memory of it.
Like my feet touch the ground, but the ground doesn’t claim me back.
It doesn’t hold me the way I hold on to it
but it’s okay, right?
A grip from one side is enough… right?
It gives me an unnatural sense of freedom.
A superpower, though I still don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.
The soil around me is so loose I can roam anywhere -
nothing holding me down, nothing waiting for me to return.
I keep moving - city to city, room to room, thought to thought ,
yet nothing ever feels like it wants to hold me for long.
So I hug everything like an old friend
and slip away with a smile
before I’m reminded I’ve overstayed my welcome.
Maybe that’s the thing about people like me.
We grow like wandering vines, clinging to moments instead of places.
We bloom where we’re needed, then drift somewhere else.
We pretend not to care when the world keeps shifting the soil beneath us,
when no place wants us to stick around longer than necessary.
And at some point, I made my peace ,
maybe with a hint of delusion -
that I can roam until a place finally holds me tight enough to be home.
Still, late at night, when everything gets too quiet,
I feel that small ache ,
the one that whispers I don’t belong anywhere.
That there’s nowhere that craves my presence
more than what I can give.
No place that lets me stay without shrinking, proving, earning.
So I remain in motion.
Rootless.
Carrying the ground I stand on with me,
because nothing else has ever asked me to stay.
And maybe that’s the part that hurts the most -
not the drifting,
not the leaving,
but the simple truth that no place has ever held me long enough
for me to call it home without hesitation.
So I keep moving, not out of freedom,
but out of necessity.
Because the moment I stop,
I’m reminded,
again and again,
that the world has never had any place for me.
And I don’t know if it ever will.
