Where I Belong, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

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.

 

 

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