You might say that I wasted my time.
Moving from city, to city,
From country to country,
Looking for the right place, for myself and for you.
All the streets I've worn out with my restless walks,
With my dreams of other places, another world, of everything.
Will I remember them all?
Will they remember the feel of the soles of my shoes?
The sound of my anxiety? My faraway gaze?
Few places make me nostalgic.
I never allowed myself to get attached, I was passing through.
A passenger is never weighed down with responsibility for anyone but herself.
A passenger can leave if she gets hurt.
As a passenger, I never relied on anyone.
But as this next transition comes closer, I wonder if I have made the right choices in the past.
Suddenly I yearn for an anchor, I want to be pulled down.
It is time to reconnect, break down the walls and be vulnerable.
New streets await my wear,
but this time my steps won't be heading somewhere else.
My feet will conquer Brussels as their own.
And so will I.
It is autumn, and I pretend I've dreaded her arrival
while secretly welcoming the season of reflection and nostalgia.
I find excuses to turn everything off and sit silently in the dark, breathing.
only in autumn do I find this space,
For the soul, for the heart.
Autumn asks questions.
I know that searching the past for solutions for the future is futile
asking the same old questions makes you find the same answers,
perhaps mistaking them for brand new.
Still (I quote):
It was not I who did those things;
cut the knot, jemmied the door, made off with goods not mine.
The door was open.
True, he did not exactly open it himself. His butler opened it for him.
His name was Boredom. He said 'Boredom, fetch me a plaything'.
He said 'Very well', and putting on his gloves so that the finger prints would not show,
he tapped at my heart and I thought he said his name was Love.
I still struggle with guilt and blame.
Sometimes I play the heroine in the playback version. Sometimes the witch.
Mostly, I am one of the extras, wishing I was allowed on stage.
Then I remember, this is fiction.
They say if you repeat a lie enough times it becomes true.
But they never tell you what happens when you replay the truth.
I repeated it until all the real elements faded away,
and stripped of all truth it can no longer harm me.
You can no longer harm me
and I no longer want to harm you.
