Flight Patterns.

If you’re my home, I'm homesick. You board a plane and everything becomes unfamiliar. Through this turbulence —that tremor and tremble— my wild whirlwind mind is wearing itself out. Thinning, finally. Exhausted. Can I starve fear by depriving it of safe ground, or still water? We're soaring, I think. Flying further. Shape-shifting our longing by sky gazing. Fast moving storm clouds. Stars, if we let them transform across our sleeping bodies. Awake, I am gentler. I’m your sunset if you're dawn.

I am becoming aware of how I am softening. Dripping like condensation from cool glass. Pouring over you. Melting against you like tired fabric; an old t-shirt, sheer against the press and pull of nostalgic palms —admiring the way it drapes so easily around the form of the wrist when turned right-side-in. Gently pliable at the back, loose at the neck and through the shoulders. I keep asking you to leave me behind when you go anywhere, ashamed, within the walls of your suitcase. Confined. Latched for good measure. I beg sometimes, to set aside my tattered affection. It's old. Worn. Habitual. I subject myself to writhe in that heap I'm in. I come up with new excuses when I am restless and alone. A puddle of mathematically inaccurate if-then algorithms. No rest for the desire of your figure.

I am programmed this way, a skipping record. I dream so often that I'll lose you that I can't help it. An ambitious nightmarer that you quiet with a shake of your head and the way you ask to lay with me. (I almost always answer, "Please.") Let me dissolve with the sharpness of our memories. Pain blurs around the edges eventually. Faded and pale. I watch you adjust the settings on your camera to keep us in focus. A new lens to see more. Developing this snapshot of time in a way that still feels beautiful to you. As much as I discard your vision, you disregard my desires to break, destroy. Shred.

I know I'm wrong. I write about it all the time. You tell me so, softly, when I am doubtful, but I know. I know. I just need the reminder. When you do, take me from your desk drawer and keep me between the pages of your book. Read me at the wrong time, the right time, all the time. Vulnerable, like folded paper ripping neatly at the seam, wet with careful envelope-kissing. Tearing without outcry, I am still your love letter. Always. Cautiously grazing your skin, at your fingertips, your lips, when you fold me up for later. Tangled and afraid for now, I think I am the pieces you packed for comfort, weary of travel.

Where is home now, and are you homesick, too?