water and nothing new

I throw the books into the box to be donated and startle the bird outside the window. It has a piece of straw in it’s beak, looking at me. This is some kind of metaphor, I think, as I pack up my home and it’s building one. But I don’t have time to think of a metaphor, I don’t have time to think of much of anything.

She is gone again tonight. Everyone is gone. They ask me why I would move so far away, when I don’t know anyone, but I don’t know anyone here. Where are my people?

I’m going to the beach, he says, but he won’t go in the water. I understand this, somehow, a girl who grew up surrounded by water who can’t swim. I write about it, I sing about it. No one will read or hear the words.

Why are you going? Why? They can’t understand. I think of the mountains, I stare at the tree outside my window. It doesn’t really matter. One place is as good as another. Why stay anywhere? My tree is growing, moving, it doesn’t stay put either.

Nothing has changed, maybe something will change.

“My favorite book is Winnie The Pooh. I like the part where Pooh goes up in the balloon.” A picture of six year old me. Scraps of life stuffed in books tucked on shelves, throw it all into bags for someone else to keep in their house.