Something important

It is strange to return, dripping
with my new life, carrying whole cities in
the small of my back and the hollows of my mouth.

Everything here is as it always was. Everything seems to be
at an edge, about to blossom or drown or catch afternoon flame.
Nothing is the same. Nothing remains. What was once whole
is now a skyful of cracks, an ocean of fissure, a house named grief.
Memory stalks through these rooms. The silence smells of peace
and unease. This house has seen so many bubbling childhoods
and now this house has known the desperate stench of death.
It is a particular kind of joy to be home. Everything here is still
as it always was. This house is a timeless childhood. A loss.

Mornings here smell of tea. Afternoons are gold.
Evenings melt into night like warm honey spreading on skin.
The horizon is always close. The neighborhood is far away.
This terrace is our watchtower, our garden of solitude,
these names mark our tongues with familiar scents.
I have unlearnt this home too long ago. I have left.
Too many roads are calling my name. These rooms
have known my griefs and my apathies, my secret vices.
There is too much here that will never belong to me.
There is too much here that will always be mine.

Everything seems to be at the edge of something important.
I leave this house with ease. I enter it with ease. Someday
something will happen. Something will move. This ocean
will shatter into a million pieces of glass, and I will lose
something important: my name in the tender morning sun
of this house. My feet in the dust of these floors. My eyes.