i’ve been away

ah; i’ve been away.

months it seems now. but really, only weeks. what shifted in my home, that i was unavailable to fasten? what subsided, that i was oblivious to maintain? what cells in my own self are now learned in things, of which i may or may not want to bring back with me. souvenirs healthy and ill. what change. what constants. what goodness or bile.

much like last fall, i arrive miserably late, with a mere day to get my life in order before returning to university. a day i will undoubtedly spend feverishly singing to him all i’ve thought in this time. after traipsing through the amazon, riding through iquitos on motorcycles, touring the treasures of the inkan gods in lima, and finally eating chicken and rice out of a styrofoam carton in the seediest of alleys at sunrise in the east village. my self is jetlagged an entire week. i only just realized where i am, and reconciled my visual surroundings with a semantic spatial definition.

i dyed my hair. i thought it would help if i looked as different as the places i’ve been. it didn’t. and i may have ruined the floor of the apartment.

it’s just like being in a classroom, listening to a lecture on something you cannot come close to understanding, but you feel like you should understand it, and everyone around you looks like they do, so you play along and pretend you’re in on the universal secret. when really. you’re daydreaming about taking your pants off and performing a silly dance atop your desk.

i will come back and love what i loved before, with more vigor and exhaustion, now that i’ve tasted absence

i will come back and give everyone their peruvian finger puppets