Back Home

(Lyrics from Back Home by Andre Tanker)

 

i went away / i leave an i come back home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

It feels as though every time I leave, it takes longer to come back.

first six months, then nine, now ten–

as if they have been grooming me to leave forever.

I ask myself how people could leave for years and years and never look back?


not even once?

But the truth is, it gets easier.

What is one year more when you’ve been gone for five?

or ten?


or twenty?

i went away / i leave an i come back home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

 Each time I fear that she will not take me back.

I think anyone who has ever left home for length of time can tell you about that fear

that you have changed too much to go back to the place

that you cannot call it home without a sour taste in your mouth.

You don’t live somewhere without it changing you and can’t come back without those changes

Whether is a yankee accent, or an expectation of something better.

i went away / looking for another home / tried to run away / run way from my destiny /

Yuh see, we is d people who does come back sayin ting like
“Well back in Canada…”

in another world / a world that was strange to me / tried to change myself / change my identity

But what we doesn’t tell yuh is how we don’t fit there either

Because whatever Canada or New York or England or other northern promised land we have created

Despite the efficiency of public transit or the cheapness of “food”

We know that we will never really be more than our hyphenations

Than our exotic accents

Than our otherness.

Calling there home gives you that sour taste too.

You can’t live somewhere without it shaping you, and you can’t leave without taking whatever idea of home you had with you.

i went away / i leave an i come back home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

Alphabet Love Song

Alphabet Love Song

(For PC 37, 38, 39)

A B C D E F G H… H… H…

H has become too heavy a letter for me.

Home, heart, hurt…

Heavy because home is where the heart is

And being here has halved my heart hundreds of times

So each of you can take it home with you.

And with your heart in over 80 countries,

There can only be hurt.

A B C D E F G H I J K L

Hurt and longing.

Longing for those you may never see again

And for those whom seeing everyday is still not enough,

Longing goes hand in hand with leaving and being left

And we learn to get good at that here, don’t we?

But there is also love.

So much love that it makes all this heaviness,

all this longing and leaving,

worth it.

So much love that it makes sense that I’d need

90 heart horcruxes to deal with it

and I know that whether I’m in

Argentina or Australia,

Zimbabwe or Zambia,

That there will always be love

And there will always be home.

Sins of the Flesh

Flesh only begets more flesh

And this flesh of mine

-formed in sin and shapened in iniquity-

knows only lust

and I dance between longings.

Flesh begets more flesh.

Passions

i can't keep twisting
my ankles to dance or
breaking my heart to write

Tensions

-->

I am beginning to name my knots.

Let one in my neck be Wanting

from every time I clenched my jaw after breathing in her scent.

Let the tightness in my shoulder be Disappointment who is also called Shame

a product of still wanting him to touch me

even though we both know he shouldn't

and being caught between recoiling and not.

Finally, the chronic ache in my back will be Distance

from consistently loving people that are too far away.

In the same way one muscle contracts as the other relaxes

these pains are interconnected

and I know that all these names mean the same thing:

I hold on for far too long and I need to learn to let go.

Requiem

I only love those

slender boys with slight frames when 

they remind me of

you.

Moonshine

Moonlight pours through my

window and reminds me that

while the days are too dark

the nights can still be bright.

Bedtime Stories

I read to you because my mother read to me.

And in those moments I felt as loved and as safe as a strangely paranoid and anxious child could feel

-Certainly more safe than the rote prayers that my grandmother made me parrot back to her made me feel-

And for years

-long after I'd stopped remembering to pray-

I couldn't fall asleep without reading.

Public Transit

Laughing at a stranger's jokes
is equal parts relief
and mania.