The return

I came back. I came back to the place I hadn’t been not sure if I wanted to be. I am not sure I ever want to be how I was before. How was I? I was lulled. Still. I came back to less stillness and wanted to crawl into pajamas again, pretend no one could see me. I have such ideas - ideas about a life I scratched off a wall I couldn’t climb. I don’t know if I want to scale that brick now, but I haven’t clipped or cleaned my fingernails. And I keep staring at its construction, angry I didn’t go into engineering. My son did. I had a son. I came back, in part, for him. It is hard for me to talk about all the things together. There are too many and they seem to be violent with each other. I know identity works this way for millions, billions maybe, but cannot believe that I too am intersectional by which I mean there’s been a crash. I came back after the world shut down to the world. I am looking around and I am unsure why the engines are revving. Didn’t everyone see the manta rays in Venice? Isn’t this is why zoom was invented? Clear water. I dreamt another life while life was slow, I dreamt a slower life but fuller. I filled up with quiet. There’s noise now and I am part of it, part of noise I never noticed I didn’t notice was gone. The leaves make a kind of silence that suspends you. I want to go back into the walks I took when there was nothing else to do, so I did nothing. I did it so well.