I gaze out the oval window feeling the full weight of my smallness drifting untethered high above the places I love my heart split wide open trying to hold each place across the miles Suspended in the air I wait to descend yet knowing that landing means I left and it doesn’t matter how many times I leave or where I’m going I’m not just leaving a place but a part of myself that only exists there Wrapped in fragile flesh and bone I am limited unable to be in more than one p

A letter to those welcoming sojourners back to their home country