An Institute of Higher Yearning

I just want to go home. Step inside the door and feel the weight of world made bearable by a backpack just fall off my shoulders. I want to sit down on an unfamiliar couch that feels invitingly informal. My shoulders would drop a few inches more and I'd exhale everything I've wanted to bare. The wanting would be done and maybe we would have a conversation or two while watching this glowing-awkward box as the focal point of our words. We could speak whole sentences with no destination but a closer proximity. We could float them up to that place that tangles prayers like a dream catcher. I could whisper to you the stillness I feel in this place and you could nod with your eyes instead of your head. We could both think this novel and choose to read between the lines. We could pretend to go at full speed when everything happened in slow motion. We could live a memory life, slowed by age. We could break our ribs and let our hearts grow in the same syncopation. Inhale until we teemed like blow fish and exhale to take flight like falling. You could throw stones at these glass exteriors. You could give them veins and bring them to life in the breakdown. We could hold hands for the first time knowing. You could prove that walls can't stand between us. We could sit while the past dismantled to the floor and choose to fix the pieces in better places. Or maybe we could just comb through the shards for a scrapbook sharper than the rest. I'd leave my fingerprints all over the pages just to say I'd been there but had never lingered. I'll happen there again, to show you my hands, when the dust settles. You can take me to print and validate every time we've ever fallen.