sprouts

I've returned to this house, this city, that I've never really possessed -- as a geography beyond the river & woods, the scattering of friends homes, and those old buildings I'd circled through that nothing leads me back to now.

It feel strange, to come to rest here without a plan to leave, to begin anew in a city that's familiar and still unknown. It's been seven years since I spent a spring here, walking in my neighborhood I'm amazed at the magnolia flowers dropping beneath the branches like pink snowfall, the bright lime buds, the perpetually cloudy grey skies.

I feel uncertain. Uncertain of my path here. Though I've lived almost four years with this idea: The untied knots can be redone... of 'a covenant with the land': eventually one must come home, one must come to rest and mix their blood and sweat with earth. I don't know how long this city will be home, but I am here.

I keep dreaming in a mixture of Spanish and English, missing my life in Guatemala. I wandered to the international food market, bought plantains and searched for masa. I'm not ready for the faces of my friends to retreat into memory, for their stories, our story, to settle. 

The floor of my bedroom is a half-finished unpacking I've abandoned momentarily for cooking, decorating cupcakes, making crafts, taking walks to pick spring bouquets, and reconnecting with the handful of dear friends I still know here.

I have so many questions of what "ordinary" life will be.