I wish I had something more profound to say coming out of all of this. I wish I could say I feel confident going back to where I came from. But I don’t. I feel like a dog with its tail between its legs. I feel like a failure. I feel ejected from my body like I misplaced my soul-like I died and came back empty.

I keep wishing I could go back in time. I think I’ve been doing that since I was eighteen-maybe twenty. And again when I was twenty-two. Now I’m almost twenty-four. Four months out from my birthday and I’m only wishing for home-to go back, like it’s gonna change things, put all the pieces back together, undo the past five years, bring you back. I keep saying I know that it’s not possible but there’s a part of me that’s bigger than I’d like to admit that hopes I’m wrong.

The truth is I know this unsettledness lives inside of me. Passed down to me from my mother. It doesn’t matter where I go, I will want. Someone said the grass is greener where you water it so I guess I’m just turning my nose up everywhere until I find some place where the grass is already fertilized. I want it easy. I want roots in the ground. I want to be eighteen. I want to fight with my brother, and laugh about it when we’re older. I want to drink with my friends and smoke my first cigarette again. I want the future to be far away and my body to be invincible. I want, I want, I want, and I want.

I want to swallow the whole universe and keep everyone and everything safe inside of me until I have all this figured out.

Like a million eyes in the sky,

On the belly of doves,

Watching, doing nothing.

And God,

Like laughter,

Coming from the mouth of a cave.