March 4, 2020:
Dislocation.
Eight years old: we leave the only home I remember and the friends I love for what turns out to be a failed quest: she breaks up soon after with the bestie she thought she wanted to be near. Much of my emotional focus remains behind with the friends from whom I've been torn. Soon as I have my first bicycle I'm on it all the way across a major city scoping the old neighborhood, hoping to bump into someone. I don't.
Twenty-nine years old: she leaves the apartment we shared for most of my life for what turns out to be another failed quest: a house of her own. At first she's thrilled, the happiest she's been in decades. I though am profoundly disrupted. I feel homeless. Uprooted. Spiritually adrift. For the rest of my life I find myself there in dreams. I'd assumed that apartment would always be ours. Like, maybe I would rent it. Maybe I still will.
Thirty-two years old. I leave my home town for exile: from the friends who love me, from the woman who might have loved me, to a lonely place where I know no-one, the sky is gray, my lips are burnt by chasing dragons.