Our nature to keep

our world safe makes us afraid --


of foreign people.

They say home is where the heart is.  
How poetic. How sweet.  
How utterly useless when you wake up in a bed that smells like someone else’s city,  
when the walls don’t know your voice,  
when the streets spit out syllables that trip your tongue.  

Tell me—does this look like home to you?  
A place where I walk like a stranger in my own shoes,  
where my laughter is softer, measured,  
where even my silence doesn’t sound quite right?  
I sit in a room filled with my own things,  
but they feel stolen, out of place,  
as if I’ve broken into a life that wasn’t meant for me.  

They smile at me, they nod, they talk.  
So kind. So welcoming.  
So oblivious to the weight I carry  
when I pretend that their way of life is now mine.  
Like it’s just that easy.  
Like you can simply unzip yourself from the past  
and slide into a new skin without bleeding.  

Back home—  
(ha, “home,” like it’s still mine to claim)  
the air was warmer,  
the sky softer,  
the ground held me like I belonged.  
Here, I am tolerated.  
Accepted, even.  
But belonging?  
That’s a different kind of luxury.  

So I go through the motions.  
I drink their coffee. I learn their roads.  
I adjust my mouth to their words,  
wear them like second-hand clothes,  
a little tight, a little loose, never quite fitting.  
And I tell myself, maybe one day,  
this place will stop feeling borrowed.  

Maybe one day, I’ll wake up  
and the walls will know my name.  

But not today.  
Not yet.  
Maybe never.

"Loosing weight is weird" I think as I stare at my naked body in the bathroom mirror.
I don't feel how I thought I would. My anticipated joy had turned to relief, a burden I no longer had to bear.
My soul has always been chaotic-always waging wars against itself, so of course this too would bring conflict.
The clothes that clung snug to my skin are now too baggy. Clothes I finally felt confident after years of searching for what worked, what didn't, what was flattering, what wasn't.
And now I'm looking up how to shrink everything
And my ******* aren't as full..
sloping and drooping down without being rounded by fat;
like tissues stuffed in a bra that's just slightly too big.
Not to sound ungrateful, because I love this new body (it's an answer to prayer really; taking away the edge of my insecurities) but I suppose it feels a little foreign.
Like a best friends house you practically grew up in: completely memorized in its familiarity; marked by memories, a home away from home, but still not the place you called "home".
And I spent so long learning how to love this body; accepting her flaws, her imperfections, but never quite convincing myself, only to have to relearn again.
And in some ways that makes me...sad?
I don't have another word for it.
Maybe it's a grieving, for the part of me that was a part of me for so long; a part I scolded and criticized.
And I hate myself at times.
Because I was my own bully-projecting my insecurities with verbal lashings.
All because I had this idea that if I was prettier, skinnier, I would feel more wanted and less alone...that it was the missing piece to my happiness.
And the assumed projections of strangers thoughts bombarded me into thinking there was truth in those hauntings,
because somewhere down the line, at an unknown moment in my subconscious, beauty became abundant.
I should get used to this changing skin, because life and age will always be forcing it to keep up, to adapt; It will continue to expand and sag and wrinkle and crease.
And I hope I can learn to love those foreign bodies too, though not so unfamiliar....
                           just unplaced.

3 years
I find a new place
3 years
I wear a new face
3 years
I carry my shame
3 years
I burden my brain

Am I the variable, or a constant in march
It's never too bright and it's never too dark
A rolling snowball or a forest in fire
Border planted flags do not inspire

I'm a foreigner
at the crossroads
what you see from a distance
wave hands
say hello to you.
I've been confused
ever since stand alone in the crowd,
no one sees me
except for a pair of eyes
that is lodged in people's heads
which I never knew before;
and the clouds turn blue but don't hurt flowing right over the head
then the birds rise expel the wind
who had tossed my long hair.
I just stare at them,
hope they don't look at me.
However, the world suddenly stopped. And my world seems to have a limit
to transcend isolation.
I'm a foreigner
at the crossroads,
which has been left behind by old memories,
and when the new comrades have become adept at reading signs,
and therefore we have bonded
like a relationship
that we are not really aware of.
I'm a foreigner
at the crossroads,
greet you as a stranger too,
but now everyone is busy making their own festival,
and don't ask,
I make a festival for whom,
except for the day
when I'm not known anymore.

What is this feeling that seems so foreign yet familiar?
As we head our own ways
down our own paths
maybe we will think to look back
but until then  
Let’s walk back to the fork in the road
and reminisce over everything we’ve seen,
over and over,


until we meet again.

Of all the beautiful words
and people in the world,
I most wished to learn them all.
Each foreign language
became so intimate once
on my tongue,
like a lover
I was just starting to get to know.