burdened ovenbird Distance is made bearable by assurance of its end. A plane ticket, even with a date far in the future, provides enough certainty to cleave to. A scheduled visit is a landmark that can be seen from anywhere, a thing I can move towards with guaranteed progress, each day bringing me closer to home. It’s a vague future that eats away at my heart. Not knowing when I’ll get home next makes the distance seem greater. Without a concrete plan I have nothing to anchor myself to and I am adrift on a sea of ambiguity. If I have an albatross it is made of yearning. Its wings are as wide as the country that lies between me and the ones I love. Its body is so heavy, but soft enough that I endure with its head like a stone against my chest. I will never set it down. Though it isn’t all unkind. Sometimes it lends me its wings and I fly back to the place I saw on the very first day I opened my eyes to the light, and I am held in arms that have known me since the very beginning, and arms that found me and loved me backwards to the moment of my origin. 260312 what's it to you? who go blather from