There exists a dissonance when you finally acknowledge that which had previously gone unnoticed. It’s all subconscious consumption and blissful unawareness until you wake up one morning in a bed you’ve woken up in dozens of times before to find yourself someplace new– it is here you find yourself, once oblivious, now in love over again. After being gone so long, it is so strange to suddenly be back.
watch her melt into
the sand, her heart claims this land
where date fruits taste like
home
it has become
harder to breathe
on this continent that
is not my own, when
I try to speak, all
that comes out is
the sweet perfume of
small white stars
jasmine vines encapsulate
my lungs— it is not my
space
to grow here
as the façade slips away,
shaking off the loose soil, you stand.
scraping the dirt built up beneath
unkempt nails, you
were once comfortable here.
memories fray like strings:
tendrils now tiny threads
thin and frail.
carve a hole from sand.
construct a dusty semblance
of home. from sediment and rock,
snakes replace the insects that fed you
starve, shrivel into the limestone scared.
sacred water. will not be spilled
for you here. you, a desert
rose.
I have an uneasy feeling of home
creeping up on me, closing in
like a sunset smothering a smoky sky suffocating the atmosphere
with dark orange cellophane
it is too warm
the fires call from across the way
they make themselves known
beyond the flashing lights
a train is coming too fast
to think about goodbyes
the wind scorns, “this is not
your home anymore,
stop coming back”
