Floral cosmopolitanism
Someplace else has always smelled most like home,
and home felt to me foreign.
Am I condemned to this kind of flip-side living; have I built it for myself?
Does it trap me or free me?
Patriotism makes me jealous. Oh, to pledge allegiance to a flag and believe it.
To go through life without a hint of doubt.
what if multiculturalism is easy?
what if cosmopolitanism is just choosing not to make a choice?
For all the violence and unreasonable pride,
knowing at your core what you are- what a strange relief it must be.
But then again...
Home is where my books are, home is where my cat is.
Home is where I scatter all my scrappy notes, confusing, concise, climactic-
it is where I dance to Ricky Martin though my neighbors see everything.
(Yeah I don't have curtains; I am living in flux. there's nothing to keep in, nothing to keep out)
Home is where I dip my brushes in watercolor and hope the paper will cooperate,
where I spend Sunday mornings conjuring the most amazing dreams of where life might take me.
Where I write lists- pros and cons- mindmaps of possibilities, and where I fail to make choices.
Home is this strange land where my physical and psychological selves merge and
they couldn't care less where that is.
We are not islands, entire of ourselves.
We are seeds, and wherever we are planted we shoot out in all directions
filling the space around us, making plans, causing mayhem.
And then we blossom- and so we notice that everyone else is just like us.
They are planted,
and they bloom,
Wherever they may be.
