I Thought I’d Be Somewhere Else by Now
not knowing what comes next.
Somewhere the afternoon lasts a little longer, where the light comes in through a window I’ve never seen before, and for once, I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be going somewhere.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
Sometimes I think I remember it. A feeling, maybe. The kind you get when you’re younger and the world is still full of places you’ve never been. Back when leaving tomorrow felt like a choice, not something that happened while you were busy thinking.
I wonder where all that time went.
It’s strange. I can remember things that happened years ago, but I can’t remember when the future stopped feeling so big. I think it happened quietly. Maybe I was looking the other way.
And now I’m here.
Wherever that is.
I still catch myself imagining things. Different mornings, different lives, little moments that haven’t happened. Sometimes they’re so ordinary that I almost feel silly for wanting them. A familiar street. Someone waiting for me. The sun going down, and nothing in particular to worry about before it does.
I don’t need much, I think.
Then I think about it some more, and somehow even that becomes difficult.
Maybe I’m homesick in my own house
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Which is strange, because I don’t know where home is supposed to be. I don’t know if it’s somewhere I’ve been, somewhere I’ve lost, or somewhere I made up because I needed there to be a place like that.
Sometimes I wish I could stop looking for it.
Sometimes I wish I could find it.
I guess both can be true.
The days go on. There are things to do, people to talk to, little reasons to laugh. And I do laugh. I forget, sometimes. For a few hours, the world feels almost light enough to carry.
Then evening comes, and I find myself missing something again.
Something I can’t explain without making it sound smaller than it feels.
I wish I could tell someone about it. Not so they could fix it. Just so the feeling could exist somewhere outside of me for a little while.
Maybe they’d understand.
Maybe they’d ask what I’m talking about, and I’d laugh, and we’d talk about something else.
That would be okay, too.
I think.
I keep trying to picture it, but the image never stays. There’s only this faint feeling that I was supposed to meet something along the way. Something that would make all these days feel like they belonged together.
Maybe I imagined it.
Maybe I still do.
