Upon Returning

Many people I know (myself included) are standing at shifts in life. The years right after college seem to be filled with changes, leaving behind people, places and ways of being that we had grown used to. Here is a piece that I wrote specifically about my return to the US after studying in Lithuania, but it applies to any stage of life we are leaving behind.

You will hold tight to the string

and measure the distance

between you and the diamond

of those days, the kite

that whips and twirls

against your memory.

 

Three weeks, you will count,

since you and Ana

biked to the beach

to look for amber after the storm.

Five months since the

landlady handed you your key

and just ten days

since the corner bakery

and the peach pastries with Andi.

 

Nadia's long blue scarf,

Luan's Albanian rock,

the frozen dumplings

fried in olive oil,

the child with the kitten

in the next apartment—

all floating far above your head.

 

Up, up the kite flies

over photo albums,

past letters and phone calls,

behind the entry-level job

and new friends.

 

You stand beneath it,

reaching for Andi and Nadia,

for the kitten, and the dumplings,

but they are in the kite in the sky

floating further and further away.

 

So you return to the ivy-grown

apartment and retrace your steps

from the bus stop to the market

where you bought the tomatoes,

hoping to find the kite

on the ground somewhere

or to see it hovering over the ferry

and run and catch it and pull it down.

 

But the winds won't relent.

And so you will look at the string

in your hand and follow its line up and up

 

and finally watch the diamond

growing more obscure

thinking how beautiful it is

against the backdrop of the sun

and the leafless trees.    

            Spring 2008