Where I Belong
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Sitting in my one room efficiency—a place I have come
To call, my burrow, I find myself
Looking back at memories of my life
And what I see are little trails—
Soundless except my mind gives them sound—
Little trails that veer off into woods
Or branch out into other trails–
They show events and conversations—
Happening right there in the path—
People emerge from the tall grass,
Say their lines, then disappear once again back
Into the field, and as I think of these memories
Some rise around bends, like mountains,
Others like bodies of water, and still others
Like wide valleys of snow, and I realize
I am not really looking back, but forward—
Looking for where the trails lead, if in fact
They lead anywhere—
For the very idea of going from here to there—
Of starting out and then winding up someplace—
Of following the trajectory of an event–
Suddenly seems effortlessly silly.
Where am I going? What gives me the right
To go even imagine I am going anywhere?
Why do I suppose that this life leads somewhere
Or to some time? Why do I need to know
It has a happy ending?
Sitting here, alone, in the silence of my books,
I stop roaming the trails and foothills
Of memory, and instead, write this down–
And suddenly the answer appears before me—
Ink spilling form forward leaving letters as trails
And I am full of the emptiness that I have to
Go anywhere.
Here, with you,
Is where I belong.