everything i carry home

1. my name means to pilgrimage; to journey home, to walk one thousand miles with your sunburned heart tied to your back if you need to, because some places are engraved into your bones - and i've known for a while i was supposed to return, a longing attached to the wings of birds migrating and river currents and seasons passing when the harvest is soon and the locusts are coming. but the map in the lines of my hands has blurred, so i just follow the memory of stars and walk and walk. i know i must return, but i know not where home is, or if it was ever real at all. i can't stay here though; so i walk and i walk.

2. all i can think about sometimes is that the pink tree should be blooming in our front yard by now, the one my sister and i wove floral crowns from when we asked the robins to allow us to be their queens. royal coronation in the sun, and i have never been so whole since. all i can think about is that the tree should be blooming; but once again i've forgotten it's been removed years ago now. sometimes home is remembering, sometimes it is closing your eyes and forgetting everything that's been lost and will never be again. all my memory is landscaped with home, and i hang on to even the plants that have been unrooted, they remind me too much of myself to leave anyway, i should be close now if i follow their roots, if i follow the river, so i walk and walk until i drown.

3. there are too many bugs here - and i realized right away if i breathe too deeply, the cicadas and beetles try to fly into my throat, make their nests and consume me while i sleep, so i hold my breath and stay awake - i wait for open skies and plains - i wait until the sun turns easy and turns her shoulder just enough for me to breathe, sometimes the north wind calls my name and tells me stories from home, "they're waiting for you, just walk a little further" - and when i can't hear her, i repeat my name and i begin my journey again.

4. there are fewer stars here too - and i know because i've counted. i used to believe if i walked far enough; that the land would pull me back herself, i wanted to believe hope could become my compass when the stars failed, but i've been walking quite a ways and i've started seeing the traces of my footprints in the soil from ground i have already traveled - and i suspect i have always been walking in circles. and i am so very tired of walking and holding my breath. but i still know i must return. so i tie my veins again to the migrating birds and river salmon and trust they'll know the way.

5. i wonder if being preoccupied with homes you can not reach by land is another way our souls remind us we were born of dust but are bound for heaven - perhaps it is God putting tension on the string between us and where we belong. or perhaps i am only sentimental, and miles are only marks drawn on maps. but when i pray, the cicadas go quiet and i can hear an echo to my footsteps - and i imagine i too have become like the bird or the fish and i too am following the one who carved the river out of the map on his own hand, who plucked the stars from their sky to remind me i must sleep, and who replants every unrooted tree into his own garden, and one day restores every grain the locusts have stolen. i imagine there is enough room to breathe and believe for the moment the space between this walking and where i'm going is only the space between now and spring.