pleased to be lonesome, quiet, and clear

I ate my last meal in England at a small Italian restaurant in Heathrow, where I sat alone at a table. I ordered a mushroom pizza and a glass of coke. I remember there was a wedge of lime in the coke, about three ice cubes. I remember the pizza being very good. I remember looking at this loneliness as one loneliness in a long queue of others that I just had to get through. It was just a moment like that, that you take as it comes, you deal with it, you eat your pizza at the small silver table on your own with a glass of coke that has a lime wedge in it. You pay a little bit of attention to the couple next to you as they help each other finish their meals, but not too much. You don’t cry. You don’t take off your hat, either. Your backpack is underneath your legs, topped with the box that has your mother’s Christmas present in it, a Wedgewood teacup from Harrod’s. When you can’t finish your pizza you leave what's left at the table with a tip, feeling a bit apologetic. You want to say, I loved that pizza. I loved that coke with a wedge of lime in it. But this is your last meal in England, you have a backpack full of Christmas presents and a Wedgewood teacup. You’re alone in an airport. You’re about to go home after three months of loneliness that you’re not sure you’ll ever be able to explain to anyone. This is a drop in a river. 

cento

Were you ever a ripple 

at the edge of yourself?

I turn to hear the sea

in the wind.

Gods eat the moon periodically--

somebody clawed a womb

apart and found we came hard

breathing from sea.

I can tell you. Once I was

moon and sun

and I went about myself.

Maps of our bodies and 

oceans coincide.

compiled from James Kimble's 

The Light the World Appears In