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The verdant draw was compelling -
a promise of fecund lushness after
the arid dust that blew through my cracks.
Impatiently I waited for my neglected parts
to grow in this green, expectant
that I would lay down upon it
and rest, grow roots,
but those take time to sprout.
For the first little while I was seed
looking for a place to germinate,
tumbling along, carried by wind and rain -
there was no rest,
only the dysphoria of upheaval,
the discomfort of change,
of not yet finding my place
amidst the smell of freshness
that the green promised would come.
It turned treacherous, instead,
thin layers of moss on every surface,
slick rocks licked by the rush of water
creating an impasse of sorts.
Moving is easy in theory: belongings
packed into boxes and trucks,
loaded and driven or shipped
across roadways and borders,
to do the reverse at the opposite end.
You can inhabit a place, unpack,
put nails into the walls and hang things
but it takes a while for it to inhabit you,
for home to sink in, if ever,
to embrace you welcomingly.
Sometimes this never happens.
Sometimes the welcome you were expecting
is yet another rebuff, clear indication
of yet another place to not quite fit in to.
The wondering comes then,
whether it is you who can’t fit anywhere,
whether the search for home will ever bear fruit,
wondering whether the one place
that needs inhabiting is you.
(c) Adriane Csicsmann Giberson 2012

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