I would like to keep you with me always, but I see you’re free…like a bird without a home. This is where you grew, where you thrived, where you learned…all the things you needed to love and survive. Childhood stains and cuts deep into one’s mind, an impression that remains and exceeds all expectations. Nothing can compare and will always fall inferior. It is hard to beat perfection; even harder when it was imperfection made perfect over time.
There is so much good you are doing over there. Healing on your end and theirs. This movement between continents, the butterfly effect of soul ripples, a delight and reunion unforgotten and necessary. Maybe we are purposed to flourish where we are placed. Maybe we are destined to be in two places at once.
To fly and soar in the hot tropics…the memories burn and simmer daily. Even the wintry gales cannot put them out. And then we are displaced, misplaced and undecided as time runs ahead and backward from us. Our beings are caught in a conundrum of life and thought. Nostalgia bleeds past the surface of our skins and we wonder when these scars will ever end.
There is no lasting remedy to stay the pain, to change the heart. Even when we’re home, we wonder how it’ll be. It won’t be like before because we’ve been too far gone. They have moved on and when we return, the change is overwhelming and looming. We can only fly without a place to nest.
So where do we begin to build a new home, a new place for the heart to rest? We can be happy when we’re back, only to be saddened even more when we’re not. I can see you laughing and free for a time, but I know deep inside the hurt you’re returning to. That is why I won’t keep you with me because for now you are free. And you haven’t been, in a long while. If I could, I would want this for you, for always. But there will always be something missing. We cannot have everything.
There is a callous upon my heart, marking the place where you once were. I have built up a tiny wall with my tears, and so they have stopped and are no more. There are some leaks and loopholes, but these are part and parcel of my poor construction. In my mind, I am getting better with time. In my heart, I know I’ll always need you there.
So we’ll be like two migratory swallows, flying across oceans and seasons, trying to be happiest wherever we land. Like birds without homes, like souls without bodies.
