I wanna run to you in an airport
Like they do in 90s romance movies
Because I miss you and
I’ve been away from home for two years

I want to sit on the beach and explain the landscape that
You know better than I do
In the language it was originally loved in, that
You never bothered to learn

Why would you?
You dip your feet shallowly
Into the water instead of dunking yourself
Like I do, down up down up down
Because you’ll be back tomorrow
And I’ll spend fractions of me

Waiting for a call or a text
For 20 bucks to send you
To breathe plumeria-scented air
From the oil on the skin of your neck
For a picture of the freckles on the webbing

between your index and thumb, and the ring
That I bought you before I left so that in the pictures
you post with your white boyfriend
I’m there on your finger

So when he’s teaching you the ‘local’ lifestyle
I’m there on your finger
So when you island hop for a surfing class
You keep me on your finger, where I can feel the waves.

I want to come home but I can’t, not before
I buy you a new ring, out here
in the empty expanse of a Where’s Waldo puzzle
It has to be

Something expensive, something durable
That won’t tarnish in the island
humidity, something that your
San-Francisco friends will ooh and ahh at
Because I want to see you wearing it when I get home.

I’ve been away from home for fifteen years
I return in my dreams, but the soil
doesn’t feel right, and the love isn’t how
my mother’s father’s father described it

At the beach, lots of people swim, but no one else
Keeps their head under and lets the water breathe life into their hair.
Lets the water into their mouth, chokes, then does it again.
But I like the way you

Dipped your feet in when you watched me
Leave, on a boat chasing Troy
Venus my northern star
As I enter the storm

My boat floats through the violence,
against Poseidon’s abundant will
because my sail made up of duct-taped exam scores
And half-organized sermons
Is mightier than any of his sons

I’ve been away since 700 BCE
But you’ll still know me when I come home

My heart sought a home, even when I was in one,
I moved here almost 9 years ago, I gave it my best,
To settle, to adapt, to overcome, to thrive even,
Instead I corroded, I mangled, I survived choiceless;

Through all your lush green and the rain,
I never found real comfort, just a respite,
I suppose I was stupid to expect it at all,
How does one find home in a war?

Nothing has changed, I don't expect it now,
I was just a city boy abandoned far away,
In an land, where I couldn't speak or relate to,
I'm supposed to belong here and I don't;

It's amazing how far I've placed my mind away,
I rarely live in that certain aspect of my existence,
I'm somewhere I don't belong and can't go back,
Where I used to belong no longer belongs to me;

I'm a nomad in a place I'll never understand,
I've grown accustomed to it's people and things,
The tailored familiarity often backfires into me,
I can't be in tune with them or them me,

I'm a child of the Earth, nameless and unbound,
Perhaps there is hope after all, I'm undefined,
Tried to fit in their boxes, gracefully broke all of it,
Maybe I don't fit in anywhere, the wildcard;

I do take great pride in that, it's a badge of quality,
The untamed among the tamed, blessed with chaos,
A mercurial maverick who desires rest and calm,
I'm only a person after all so I hope, I hope, I hope...

I rake the ashes

of the olive stones and I --


smell my homesickness.

I didn't even live by a river
yet again I stare into the distance

at nothing, at the water
that cannot choose either

where it ends up
over which toxic grounds
and prickly expectations
diluted, frozen or eaten
by a thousand kilometers of sun

Black wings of homesickness
grow on my shoulders

but I know I'm covered
by the lion of my duties

to people like me
who once left somewhere
dreaming, to learn
that there is no way back
to their youth

February Morning!
How gracefully you in your nostalgic attire trigger memories
and this profound understanding;

The rushing energies before school
How I wish I could go back and take hold,
Of those hours of pure fantasies that wasn't disturbed
by the thought of my parents getting old;

February Morning!
Maybe your fragrance wouldn't have hit me so hard,
If I wasn't preparing towards a seemingly fresh start
in the lands of the lake poets;

And I now wonder,
Intimidated by your Swift withering,
how life has hypnotized me into singing
words of worth
for the synthetic and tangible shimmering;
I feel you've woken me up from an hazy conscious;

Next year,
If I'm to feel your caressing light again,
It mightn't be from my beauteous and evergreen nest;

Maybe you'll come in a different costume,
bearing a distinct scent
That I'll both adore and hate;

Maybe because
your wind will then carry a cold solitude
and I'll terribly miss my brother and our silly disputes;
while the chaotic kitchen clangs would seem so distant
comparing to the silent heaves of crocuses in outside gardens;

February Morning!
I know if I get to know you there,
My heavy hours in library won't stop me from reminiscing;

Maybe,
Nostalgia would strike me more violently
but this time
accompanying a yearning that'll pierce my heart silently;

Another college tour, another favor. This time it was an old schoolmate, George and his parents who were taking the official tour. I was going to babysit his little sister Mary (5) while they walked around.

It was good to see someone from home and sad in a way. For a moment, I had a tugging feeling, like there was a hook deep inside me and the reel was back home.

When I first saw George I remembered a time, in 10th grade, before COVID. I was leaving school early and waiting to be picked up. Twenty track boys, fresh from their daily run, were lounging, seductively around. George, in particular, in a pose rather like Michelangelo’s Adam. “***!” I remember thinking at the time.

I smiled at that long-ago tableau. “What?” George asked, he was watching me. “Nothing,” I smiled, “Just looking forward to babysitting”

Mary and I exercised to a video, had a pizza delivered and colored - crayons aren’t easy to find in the modern college environment so we used high-lighters to create delicate, watercolor-like masterpieces.

As we drew, Mary said, off-handedly, “You’re really nice,” as if the nature of my character had been in some dispute. Still, I still felt warmly complemented.

When the tour was over, we were walking up science hill toward their car and the sun was declining to sunset. “How do you like it,” George asked, confidentially, head lowered, voice low enough not to be overheard by his parents who were walking a few yards behind us with Mary. “There’s a LOT of reading,” I said, shruggingly. “but I’m keeping up.” Last year I was a junior, this year I’m in college. It seemed absurd.

How do you conjure a vision for someone of what college would be like, when college experiences are so individual? The writer's dilemma, interpreted by a babysitter.

As we reached their car, the caroling bells started ringing (5pm) from Harkness Tower.  It was the perfect send-off. Again I felt the pull of homesickness but my phone plinked and the emotion didn’t even last as long as dusk.

it’s not that i don’t want to go back
i don’t even know if my grounds are sound

i just don’t want to be the person to return
only when someone has died

the homesick one looks up to ask
"please, when do we go back?
for tears will quickly do their task,
will carve another track"

the knowing one just turns and smiles,
explaining once again,
that back is so much more than miles,
that now has become then

the homesick one, though, doesn't hear
the answer, for the thousandth time,
she wants to turn a deafened ear
so may the truth well chime

the truth that home is far away
that there will be a thought of when,
until that longed-for summers day
when she is home again

that home forever grows
the knowing one reminds once more
as sure as anything she knows
it's right there in her core

yet homesick one still asks and calls
relentlessly for home
she feels imprisoned by the walls
she wishes she could roam

she begs and screams for unity
for just one little trace
of love, of that community
where she had found her place

the knowing ones exterior cracks
the smile cant further hold
the tears now finally run their tracks
and masks begin to fold

and suddenly they all burst out
my knowing, homesick tears
of longing and I almost shout
something to never reach their ears

I want to scream how this is wrong
that I feel empty without them
that where my love and joy will stem
is the home where I belong

I dont, of course, I never would
the knowing one reminds me soon
that home I know is just as good
and still I long for come next June