ticket home for the soul

cradle my memory so i don't forget how to feel

it's a funny thing, pointing fingers and blaming.

on that last night, was i blaming my smile for dissolving the sun into an ocean of envy? i was so happy, finding home amongst the flickering streetlights with the fizzling aftertaste of peach fanta on my tongue. i can still feel, with a painful intensity, my grandma's sun-withered hands against my spine as i crouched beside the road with the urge to vomit my nostalgia all over the curb and let the bitter-sweet bleed to turn the street into a hopeless romantic. the lights flashed in my brain as i was drunkenly overtaken by a desire to plant my body among the lilac flowers  right then and there, maybe even proclaim the stars and sun my compass.

on other nights, i can still feel the blueness of the blossoming waves calling out to the sand when i turn my fingers over and kiss the sunspots etched onto them from those afternoon summers. i can feel the salt-saturated wind against my burning skin as i cup the mountains in my palms, setting my heart to fly with the seagulls and wander in the sunflowers. if i shut my eyes hard enough, i can make them bleed serenity.

yet, other times, i lose myself on a dark streets in the corner of my mind where the rhythm of lovers' last dances  and the waning melodies of midnight guitar carry my aching, tear-filled body straight into the airport and set it among the baggage. how do you know if the soul of this girl whose passport you are checking is traveling with her? the leaves of a plant rot before its stems, but i'm frightened to tell you i can't tell them apart.

perhaps it is lost in the gutter, illuminated by the final full moon of the summer. or, maybe it was abandoned in the bedroom of a mother who left her family and homeland behind chasing foreign dreams. there, i see it! peeking between torn books and the melodies of my grandma's storytelling piercing the fevered air,

-honey, roses, and bread may not quell my soul but they speak to my emotions, and it's been a while since i last reconciled with her

10/26/20