A poem by ARIANA RAZAVI.
i.
It is exciting, refreshing
a new start that my heart has yearned for
a hope that I have finally been able to grasp.
I land in a new city
loud, daunting, overwhelming.
It is alive,
far more alive than I have ever felt.
I learn the train lines,
and the grid system.
I cry on the train lines,
and on the grid system.
The wind feels different,
manufactured.
Everything starts to.
I feel alone. I feel scared.
I realise I can’t run home anymore.
I call the place I sleep my apartment.
Never home.
I feel pure, unreserved loneliness.
I never had before.
I sob when I leave my first adult-life friends,
my first found family,
Across the bridges, as I fly over the lights.
Such was the first pain.
ii.
That was a trial run,
I think to myself.
Not real life.
I still don’t know who I am,
Why I am here.
I leave in pursuit of this purpose
(later I find it, I think).
Southern hemisphere heat burns
as I yearn for what I left behind,
what I so consciously refused to call home.
for weeks I wish I were still there.
Slowly,
without realising,
it dies out,
that desire.
I learn new trains,
new names,
new streets.
it’s different,
there is a sweetness to this pain,
a purity.
I am understanding, less blind to my fears.
I face them.
I write.
I learn to make friends,
I make good friends.
We watch films and drive across bridges.
I move around a lot; it is not a home really.
I sob again when I leave.
But of fear.
To leave these honey-like months.
Such was the second pain.
iii.
It is real this time.
I can’t run to my real home anymore.
Though I lose sense of what that word really means
It is strange this time.
Surreal.
It feels as though it should be more daunting.
Perhaps it is desensitisation, perhaps it is growth.
I learn, I write, I change.
I think about big things.
I walk in new parks and
don’t take the train very much,
though the growing pains find balm in riding them.
I can’t find friends.
The loneliness,
now almost a comfort,
settles like dust on my life.
If I don’t move it won’t move.
I lose good habits.
I forget what I’ve learnt.
Childhood feels too far.
Such is the third pain.
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