turn the page

*this regards my homecoming, and is the opening of a joyous embrace of being Southern. rest assured I am not bemoaning my present life; rather I am happy to keep going and see where the story takes me.

what happens,
where my eyes cannot be;
words are spoken, and thoughts pass
in the absence of me.
were you thinking of something,
because I was thinking of you,
holy city, of the suprises in a world
I tried so hard to give up:
my hometown, I was humiliated to return,
broke and saddened, that I was,
in my pride, greatly persuaded
to leave you for good,
and yet we never left each other.

these things, these ideas they wax and wane
in a felicitious circle of light in my head:
they are always with me, a daydream.
oh, right job in the wrong city,
a list of reasons a mile long
leading me away from here to there,
to that place which exists right now
in the absence of me.
I am Kate Chopin's heroine
striking the landscape at water's edge:
I am stripping myself of it all,
bare of all my anchors
as I step into the sea.
I am ready to swim into that ocean,
looking forward to the horizon,
never Lot's wife gazing back
as life passes into shadow.
music and laughter lift me
from sinking; I can almost hear
the page of the next chapter turning,
in this brazenly bittersweet story,
and nearly experience that place
waiting, existing, in the absence of me.