Train Song

I like to leave the house in perfect order when I go away. The pillows on the couch must be standing up straight, the blanket I always cuddle with on the couch has to be folded and hidden away, my bed will be made, my clothes clean and in drawers, the towels hung and waiting for my first back-at-home shower, and the dishes washed and stacked. Order. Neat and tidy order. It's pleasant, comforting.

B even left me some lilacs to come home to. Reassuring; people love me here. People who know my favorite flower and care that I'll come home to their scent filtering through the kitchen.

It's all so that when I come back I can just sit back and sigh and remind myself that this is where I belong, but what happens most often is I sit back and wonder if it really is.

I know it's where I am right now, but where am I going?

It's the travel time that messes with my head. There's something about sitting, contemplatively, for hours on end as I commute to and from my destination. I think. I dwell. I wonder. I imagine.

I make notes while I travel - sloppy, imperfect, illegible notes - in my notebook. Notes that are meant to illicit some memory of some pertinent life alteringly important item when I look at them later. My scrawlings. They mean very little. Like dreams that were once so vivid, but now I can barely recall them. I just know they were good. And important. And they must have meant something. But what?

I speed down highways, and cruise through neighborhoods, and picture myself walking out of that front door onto that front porch, instead of this one. I buy coffee in a coffee shop and picture myself there every morning for dark roast instead of here. I meet friends in bars and order beer and imagine that it is the place we meet after a long day, and not the other place, states away. And then I imagine what's missing: the friends on that porch, the friends in that coffee shop, the friends in that bar, states away. It's not really worth it, I think.

It's not reinvention that I want, it's transplantation. Come with me, friends, I'll show you other towns and other cities and other lives that could be ours. We'll walk down different streets and see different houses and not know our way around. We can try new restaurants and eat new food and wonder if the place next door is any good because we've never been there.

We can not know something. Here, we know everything.

I guess coming home to that is comforting.

Straightened pillows, folded blanket, made bed, clean clothes, straight towels, stacked dishes and fresh cut lilacs because someone knew I would like them.

I take a deep breath, unfold the blanket, ignore the mail, and remember why some things are worth knowing.