Homeward Bound


The only one I know who has remained present alongside me from ’94 to modern day
Is myself

There are some people I’ll see, that will put a smile on my face
Some of them I’ll coldly turn away and keep my from distance from
Though it’s the people bound tightly to our lives we often disregard until the days expire
When they are shaken from our sanctuaries is when we see their principal contributions
Deigned meaningless by our ignorance
Others, whom we never know, have said farewell from the day we first laid eyes on them
They walk through the back door of our hearts as evasively as they entered
Those we wish for are never taken for granted, nonetheless, never in view

An epiphany only realized at the adjournment of this chapter
While we stand watching one another scatter, and walk away

So I’ll say
I miss the days
I talked before I thought
When I would believe the most ridiculous of lies
Naivety lit up the daytime but blinded the way
When in December, I’d play ninja with brooms and a sleigh
The time I laughed while my older sister yelled while the younger one cried
Since I prank-phone called the boy who goes to our school
The time I ran from two drunks with two skinny kids
The time it took five parents and an elementary school teacher to separate my friend and I from one
everlasting bear hug
And all the times I’ve ever sincerely spoken, indifferent to fears I let overtake me today
But now
Age and experience replaces my childhood and the dreams that I can see
Silently escaping from me through the trees silhouetted against the dusk
As warm porch lights, that at night, flicker on and off during balmy summer nights

My days in suburbia eventually took to and through my childhood and soon will take me away
To some distant foreign land
But on this night, I do declare, the make-up of my life still unsettled but in place
There’s nothing left to build
My building blocks from Kindercare have fallen for reestablishment under another’s tiny hands

Just take this piece of art and give it one more minute of attention before it is to be sold
Taken away by some stranger, who’s a neighbor, on a bike down some familiar concrete, shaded road
While I stand at moment’s notice, attentive to the sound of the spokes that dissipate
To take with him all I’ve known of life

Now far out, he reaches the horizon line of my eyesight
With the world I have painted in his unknown hands
I should have known paintings are not mine to keep, but only to create

The backdrop transforms into a curtain call-like theater scene
A conclusion to a dream
And the four-square patch I stand upon quakes
My landscape is proven a tangible drapery that falls from place,
Once impaled by the stranger, continuing on down a path no longer in existence
Bringing down with my setting, popular beliefs, skewed hopes, complacent indecision, happiness,
And me

Until the realization of closure precipitates filling in my lost history with a tapestry void of definition
Though this time I’ll walk the ground moat fitting on the soles of my feet,
And plant the scenery of this land newfound
Regardless, the people I shared my days with felt incomplete
I guess the only way left to take is through a dark; a light will soon take me homeward bound
A light that won’t blind me,
A promise it keeps