sometimes

Sometimes, I lay wide awake in my bed at 3am and wonder what I’m doing in this new city, on stolen land, and how all this stuff — the mugs, the rugs, the chairs, the spoons, the art falling off the walls — could possibly be mine. Sometimes, I cry the entire 11pm drive home and play out the hard conversations I am trying to have with people and yell the things I cannot, will not yell at them. Sometimes, the poetry books by my bedside go untouched for weeks on end. Sometimes, I am left with a ball of anxious frustration and not enough curiosity to handle these tiny cups with care. Sometimes, I wish I had the guts to exchange the applause for silence. Sometimes, I feel like I have been uprooted and chucked across an ocean, without the oars to navigate my way (to new) home, let alone a compass. Sometimes, I feel like I do have a compass, it just wasn’t designed for reading this land. Sometimes, I find clammy hands over my throat holding back honest words that used to come more easily when my city was bigger, less permanent. Sometimes, I forget how beautiful our highways here are and how plantations shouldn’t be beautiful. Sometimes, I spend so much energy trying to be here that I forget what I came for in the first place.