The Stars and the Cookie Jar

This used to be the season when I'd disappear. In May when term ended I'd start thinking of where I'd end up, because there was no way on the radiant earth that I was staying at home, wherever home happened to be. I'd max out my financial aid and find a couple of mangy grants or prizes nobody'd thought to apply for, and I'd just, I'd run away.

And I was thinking yesterday on the drive home that I don't want to do that anymore. It's not that I'm a grownup with grownup finances; it's not that, in my current state of health, I'd probably have to be helped onto a horse. It's that I've lost the urge to go and do reckless things on my own in foreign countries. I still want the ocean, the railway stations in the twilight, the mountains that hold up the sky; I still miss living on coal-baked potatoes and rough bread and plain white cheese for some months of the year. Maybe a part of me misses the narrow and absolute accountability when you are the only one responsible for your own life, because you're out in the middle of wherever, learning the words as you go, and you're alone.

But I don't want to be alone for any of it anymore. I can see all the warm days ahead and they're sweet. I don't want to forget any of them. I don't want it to blur together. I don't want to be anywhere but where I am.