I thought I could find you again
I thought if I ran fast enough I would break back into time
I would land, panting, twisting in a sweat soaked bed, tangled in an old mosquito net
I would wake, ceiling fan still again, roosters crowing, market calling, coal fires burning black ash up to the sky
I would walk ten steps to school, countless with a dog, I would press my face up to a screen window willing the city electricity to come on – do other children even call it “city electricity”?
We would drive, two hours, one hour, three or four, to a ballet class where I was out of rhythm milk in a coffee colored dance – a grammar mistake, different, again.
We would sit, oil lanterns lit, eating home flipped tortillas and fajitas with maybe carefully rationed cheese. We would laugh – at our dog, at Harry Potter, at anything kept secret in our family of five, my safety. We would sit, wooden table with white legs, and revel in our little circle, the place where I belonged.
I thought I could find it again. That corner of the kitchen where the tiles are always cool, where I sat in the dark and waited. I thought if I sat there, I could cry over you, Home, for the last time.
Instead I cry for spilled pasta, for delayed flights, I cry for burnt pancakes, bumped cars, fast traffic lights, I cry at series’ finales, new songs, and discontinued teas.
But every time I cry over something new, I’m just trying to grieve again, the very old, the very dear, and the very well remembered you.