Longing

I don’t recognize my life.

I don’t recognize my men, whose life I am committed to.

I don’t recognize this wooden bungalow that I’ve occupied for 8 years.

I don’t recognize the work that I am wholeheartedly committed to.

I don’t recognize the stack of bills that I pay every month or the ones that come once or twice a year and ask me for thousands.

I don’t recognize the routine.

The mediocrity.

The predictability.

The standing-still.

The same faces.

The same time of year that keeps coming around and finding me in the same place.

I feel trapped,

I tell Leo.

We are.

But only temporarily, the tone of his voice matching the gentle rain.

I want to run.

Hard and fast.

Want to look at a map

and plan my get-away.

Too connected to my daily life.

Too, too connected.

Longing for novelty

and unfamiliarity.

I’m 38

and when I was 28,

I was on the road

with a backpack, a map and

on foreign soil.

Today

I am at home

with my feet on the ground

and my obligations

pecking at my feet,

and I want to be flying,

high in the sky.