My brother asked me – one time ago –

Why I write

I didn’t know how to answer him then

Didn’t know how to say that so often

I feel lonely

Some tell their earliest memories as sepia photographs

Sunlight glinting off dew-cast grass

Dog breath and dandelion fluff in the air

Not so for me

No, my first memory is a feeling

A series of feelings from disparate moments held together by the single

Thread

Of loneliness

Six months old, anesthetic still in effect

Bandaged face and bandaged hands and feet

The first to protect me from the world

The latter to protect me from myself

Fast forward

Six years old

Face pressed against window, nose against cold glass

Twinkling city lights blur by night roadscape

Nodding off to hushed anger and tense silence

 

At the age of ten I learned the meaning of love

First in the glint of her amber hair in the sun

Then its absence from the silence and laughing whispers

Every day my silent soliloquy to the fanfare of pointing fingers

For years after the sunset brought tears to my eyes

Still years later did I realize the meaning of that bittersweet waterfall

By then I had no interest in others’ childish affairs

– or so I told myself –

Pulled away from my bloodkin as I longed for an end to

The loneliness

How was I to know I was looking for a family

Somewhere to fit in

 

I’ve found that now

Or so I like to think

Many days I thank the air I breathe

Filling my lungs with life

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Other times the action simply reminds me of the

Vacancy

Inquire within

But at the front desk there’s no one to be found

How do I express that this is why I write

That I am a traveler in my own landscape

Perhaps presumptuous to call it mine

Regardless I am always tired and everyday interactions feel like

Accustoming myself to some new culture still foreign

These strange words feel round and heavy on my tongue

This air is sticky

These clothes are not mine

This body has been misplaced

Sometimes I feel like the pair of shoes in the closet

The one where “pair” is a generous word

The pair bought on impulse at a sale

Now dustily wedged into the corner by the door

Its partner existing only in theory

Buried in the back under someone’s third attempt at a scarf

Or perhaps one of the dog’s indiscernible chew toys

Gone the way of the grayscale silent films

Or perhaps accidentally thrown away

Or intentionally?

An aesthetic banana peel

Admonished for going rogue by going to the dump

How do I tell my brother I write because I am lost

I am that child sitting in the corner cushioned seat of the

Motel waiting room

– Excuse me, lobby –

Too short to bend at the knee

Arms levitating in front of me so swaddled am I in

Puffed pink parka or some such similarity

Buried under a mound of material making proud that old

Witches’ saying to never leave home without a jacket

The tip of a nose emerging from between oversized beanie cap and even bigger scarf

Two things are abundantly clear

And only two

Though I am loved, I am lost

And I write in repeated attempts to find my way

But my brother holds the lantern as we grope our way through darkness

Together

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