When It’s Time To Leave

My lungs heave like the sails of horizon ships and I know it’s time to go, know it’s time to pack the brushes and the christmas lights, the cast-iron pots and the framed pictures of letters you wrote me from the other side of this continent, know it is time to leave this small snowglobe of a hamlet, to unroll pavement like long lines of fruit-by-the-foot for tasting.

I’ve starred constellations of cities on the worldmap beating against my rib cage and still don’t know what accent I will speak my tomorrows in, don’t know whether or not to bend back the arms of this compass or to trust in their magnetism, don’t know with whom or for whom I will do all of this travelling.

And maybe it’s just this quaking of restlessness right beneath the bones, a bruise of the tectonic plates of my history bumping into one another, converging to push my heart to exit, or maybe this is just the way time works, to bring you to places so that one day you might leave them, to bring you into the new arms of new people to help you pick up the pieces of everything you have left.

I am of all things anchorless and wide-eyed. There are so many oceans, so many lives to wade through. I shed this one with love and affection, with a fondness I know will root itself into the soles of my feet long after the others have turned to salt from all of their over the shoulder glances. I will not look back, not yet, not with the sun so juicy in the distance.

I know it is time to go and so I set forth to snag the cracking dawn.