Prodigy Comes Home

The object was to move.
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So I spun: north, west, south, and east, searching for my center.

My first stop was a ferry terminal in Seattle. The sight of departure took on the charm of a final flourish. Autumn afternoons ended early, and the promise of good coffee kept your eyes open in the rain.

The object was to move higher, so I flew North for the summer.
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The next stop was a train platform in uptown Chicago, amid the silhouette of rooftops back-lit by neon marquees. It was slam poetry night. I met a girl who I began writing about, the kind that smiled at you to be polite and never wrote back. I rode the Red Line back to an empty hotel room, invisible as the wind they named the city after.

The object was to move together. I found myself drifting.
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I drove to a church in D.C. for a spring wedding. I stumbled out of the reception hall into a back alley bar named “Sovereign”.

I froze on a bus stop bench in Milwaukee, staring at the Christmas lights that hung in the dead trees of an abandoned park.

I dragged my baggage in circles through crowded airports, looking for my gate.
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The object was to keep moving. I got nowhere.

As a weeknight dinner conversation, I’d remind my daughter of the beaches we left behind in Florida.

​We’d sit by the window of our 4F apartment in Raleigh while the spaghetti got cold.

"Look how far away the sidewalk is from here," she’d comment.

​We’d point at the tail lights of a passing car as if its glow was worth following.

I’d tell her that shiny objects vanished like the moon if you looked for too long.

I dreamed of moving in all directions, eyes shut to how the lights inside a home revealed everywhere I could hope to go.