Gummybear

it’s kind of like someone has emptied out your ribcage,
spread out your intestines and silenced your nerve endings--
there’s a concavity of empty space where your heart used to be.
sometimes you can still feel it lurching.
it’s kind of like looking outside at unbroken snow,
the quiet loneliness that comes from a lack of footprints.
it’s kind of like looking at the moon and getting homesick from the stars.
there’s some missing part, just past your fingertips, butterfly feathers of
forgotten pieces. solvitur ambulando:
it is solved by walking, but you’ve been wandering for so long
that you don’t think you’ll ever actually find somewhere to call
home.

the wind whispers intangible words of a forgotten language,
butterfly kisses of missing pieces, knowing that there is more
to life than just this. the sensation is something that settles
in the pit of your stomach, pressing against your ribcage and
fraying all your nerve endings. there’s something pressing in
the back of your mind but it’s an unscratchable itch. it’s hard
to find home when you’ve already wandered everywhere left
for you to go. maybe it has never been wanderlust; maybe it
has always just been homesickness for somewhere that you
have never actually seen, for someone you have never act-
ually met. keep walking.