depart raze if i were going, i'd already be gone. 220816 ... ovenbird When going home means leaving home there’s no direction I can travel that doesn’t add new micro tears to my overstretched heart strings. I’m waiting for the day when it’s all too much and the rubber band that holds me together snaps back and breaks me. I hate this part, with its lacerating good byes. I tell myself that it hurts because there’s so much love, and that means I’m lucky. But I can’t help but feel I’m being punished—for some decision I did or didn’t make, for some past life transgression, for a fatal flaw somewhere deep in my life’s crystal lattice. I could stay here. I know I could. Except that I can’t. And, when the time ticks down, I’m never quite ready to go back to the life I chose. I say, “I’ll be back soon,” and “the time always flies.” And it DOES. It goes so fast that I’m left nauseous and amazed. When I’m back here next I’ll say, “It feels like I was just here,” and yet I’ll know how much missing I had to do to arrive. Both are true: the hulking grief that rocks itself to sleep and laments how long it will be until next time and the incredulous surprise when time melts away faster than I can believe and brings me back to the beginning of the circle—the joy, the homecoming. Around and around until no grass will grow on the compacted path of my endless return. Tomorrow I’ll pour out my tears in libation. I’ll ask the earth that knew me first to watch over those I love while I’m gone. Then I’ll wind the watch in my head and start counting down the minutes until everything comes around again. 260803 what's it to you? who go blather from