Home is Nowhere

My memories are like the Wailing Wall--

they are all that's left of so many people I never wanted to say goodbye to.

All I can do is cry after them

and try to imagine a life not constantly marked

by a stopwatch in an invisible hand.

I am running as fast as I can! Every moment feeling the pressure of trying to make things matter; make something count and anything important...

Will anyone remember this fleeting, frenzied soul?

It seems those I don't want to forget do not share my urgency,

but they do not know as well as I that most relationships end at goodbye.

I live in a different time zone, accelerated to a level of frantic unrest that no one should have to fathom.

People think I'm in a hurry,

and I am.

I want to make impressions on hearts.

Sometimes I want to settle down!

Sometimes I want not to leave what is good.

I depart the station as the train arrives.

I'm writhing in pain.

Dear Africa, will I see you again?

Have you forgotten me, Belgium, though I spent precious years with you? Do you remember that last day we shared, when I gripped tightly your grassy earth and prayed not to be pulled away?

Kansas, Kansas my contempt for you grows

but I desperately need Missouri.

San Francisco, New Orleans, Cape Town, Soweto, Chicago, London,

Charleston! I plead with you to take me back and take me in. Never let me go.

I cry out for all my stillborn friendships.

Parts of me have died! Have been left on far corners of the wide earth.

I wear black to mourn my future losses.

I have no one. Home is nowhere.