I want to come home. But first, I have to define what my home is.
I want to feel that feeling as if I have arrived, as if my trip has been so long and tiresome yet, as soon as I hit the door; I instantly forget the pains and strains of my uphill climbs. I can forget about all the infinitely evasive ideas that seem too unfair or too distant, and each time I reach, my goals and my dreams and the object of my love and desire moves to an extent that is just beyond my fingertips.
I can see. I can almost feel.
I just can’t touch.
I want to find myself in the soft setting of a little town, intimate and quaint, where people gather during the warm afternoons on Sunday when the day turns golden and townfuls of people say warm things to each other, like “peace be with you,” and also with you. . .
I want to notice the imponderable wealth of an easy life. I want to resign and retire to an easy living and understand the inestimable value of purity. I want to be somewhere and experience the neighborly sentiments of prideless smiles and egoless people who share their lives with each other and offer their good will in humble ways, like their secrets to the best peach cobbler or to understand the mutual feel of how nice it is to give someone a taste of a great key lime pie.
I don’t know where this is.
I don’t even know if this place exists.
But I hope it does.
And I hope the fireflies come and visit me here too.
I love that.
I cannot say that I am done with the city, nor can I ever be done with a place that has meant everything to me.
The city . . .
She is my Queen, my lady of turbulence. The city is my dear sweet Mother Directional, and sometimes; my Mother has been known more as Mother Correctional and showed me to pay attention through painful lessons that come with the game called Fuck Around and Find Out.
However, she is my love. She is my dream and my everything.
The city . . .
She has seen me at peace and at war, in good times, and in moments of wealth. Also, the city has seen me humbled and fallen, dropped from the hands of grace and onto the sidewalks of despair—yet, the city and I have this longstanding agreement.
I will always love her and she will always welcome me back, prodigal son, or not,
I will never leave her. She will always understand me and know me, truths and all, lies and deceits and she will never judge me or refuse me —because after all, she is the city and she is the keeper of secrets, far deeper and darker than the ones she covers for me.
Don’t worry.
She knows me well.
Either way, when I go, I’m going to go, which means that perhaps I can find someplace where I can go and live and let my sleeping dogs lie. Or perhaps I can clean the closet where my skeletons hide.
That would be nice.
No more remnants from my yesterday or memories of what took place, and no more pain, nor sadness, nor will there be room left for doubts and fears because as I find my place — or should I say “when” I find my home, wherever this may be – I will encounter the inestimable version of Heaven and say that yes, I have found my peace on Earth.
I will arrive and say “ah,” so I can breathe or sigh in relief with the understanding that regardless of what happened or what took place, I endured everything, and i stood and I fell. In the end, no one beat me so badly or crippled my step or silenced my tongue.
I want to find my place and realize that fate and destiny know that timing is everything. And when the time comes, it will be as though no time has passed or as if yesterday is forgotten and all the dues and fees were both paid in full and forgotten as well.
I am settled.
I see you, beautiful as ever, wholesome and true, yet I see you living in a life that is unfair, or less than smooth.
I see you still as I believe you to be, which is childlike and pure, even at our age, and even after the fights and destruction and the wreckage from our past; I see you as imponderable as well, inestimable, of course, and far more reaching than the horizon or more brilliant than a starlit night with a full moon.
You are more than anything to me.
You can say that I don’t know about all the details in your life or that I don’t understand. You can say that I was not there to see what you saw or feel what you felt. You can say that you and I have had our bouts and fights, and yes, we both have bumps and bruises and scars, which are not visible, by any means, but you and I know where they are and we know exactly what they look like.
I do not see you as someone with imperfections or as someone who has flaws or as anything that the flesh would cling to.
I see you as something more. I see you as something beautiful, or like a constellation. I see you as something that the universe has intended to make as timeless; however, time has always been the thing that we hold on to—no different from the ideas of the flesh, or the fears of the mind and the worries of the heart—but you are more to me than this because as it is said, that which is of the flesh is of the flesh and that which is of the spirit is of the spirit. And you?
I see you as one who is of the spirit and, to me, you are the center of the universe which is where my spirit longs to be.
I understand the stars play games. Maybe the stars are far younger than we think and they play, like little girls when they used to play games, like skipping jacks—remember?
Little girls kneel on the ground and toss up a small red rubber ball, and then they pick up as many jacks as they can before the little ball bounces twice—or maybe the stars shoot marbles, like the game my Old Man used to play when he was a little boy.
Either way, fate plays games and so will destiny, but in the end; I know that something is coming my way and, in my heart, I know that today brings me one step closer to where I want to be — and hopefully, I can say the same for you with me.
We are all one step closer to something.
So, ante up
and let’s see what fate and destiny have planned for us today.
The Written Addiction 