There, There

The waggle -pleasantly unpleasant of a loose tooth, the catch and scratch of wool against your skin, the bounce in the step the lover you can't have.

I resort to metaphor because this thing, my consuming lust for place, is unspeakable.  Not unspeakable in the sense of shameful, but unspeakable as in we -simply?- don't speak of it.  Friends don't mention it.  Literature leaves me hanging.   Am I the only one?

I try to rein it in with adjectives: My desire for this place is obsessive and exuberant, fine-grained and big-boned, anxious and ecstatic.  I ache for my place when I'm away; I ache for my place when I'm home.  The press of it, the weight of its memories, is in my mouth and on my hands and in my head -my place with its taproot and its branches and its bright bursts of green and flame.

More metaphor.  Can't we speak plainly?   I love this town.  I want to be here.  I can't.  It hurts.

I try to walk it off.   But walking is how you make love to a place, how you press and impress and are pressed and impressed until you can't tell what from where.

As always, I land here.  Some particular corner of there and then: the road I rode so fast my bike went head over heels and left me half-dipped in blood; the wilderness I dreamed behind the wire and scrub; where I went to cry at 19 and at 9 and 26.   Sometimes there were berries.  I haven't seen the spot in years.

Still, it hurts.