HOMESICKNESS

HOMESICKNESS

Homesickness hurts/ because it will always be unrequited. ---From “Heartland” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 01-04-12

Mudfish between fingers, rice stalks

whipped by whistling monsoon wind

on our thin backs, rain-pelted faces:

you cannot look back at them in anger. 

But you do. You have lost them forever.

You can never be there again. Forever.

You will go back to the old schoolyard,

but you will not find the desk you carved 

her name on, hearts, initials, arrows,

all gone from sandpapered desk tops,

dark paint covering the deepest cuts

like healed cankers, mended wounds, 

scars of the rawest longing for the girl

who had the longest hair, wiliest smile,

cleverest excuses for going home late,

“O, we cleaned the blackboards and all.” 

Are the moss-gowned shore boulders

still there? The rocks in whose crevices

you buried secret vows to always be there

for each other in this place, this town? 

That tamarind tree in whose branches

your kite got caught, rended bamboo

ribs cracked you wept over until she

stilled your quivering shoulders in her 

arms, is it still there between the hills

you named after her, body parts you

were too scared to call were like hers?

Does the tree still bear its tangy fruit? 

There will be more questions. Will you

find the answers you need to go home?

You will even ask the trees, if you must,

but even they will no longer talk to you. 

---Albert B. Casuga

01-04-12