Recluse

My dis-ease is a predisposition towards withdrawal.

The world is not a safe place. I will not stick my neck out. I will no longer dance in weird circles in the kitchen to the sounds of Putamayo. I will write "I will be quiet" 100 times on the chalkboard while the rest of the class snickers behind me.

I will refrain from, well, refrains. I will accept the tongue screw. I will worship in silence.

I will slip deep underground like a hard shelled seed. I will lie within the carapace and not long for release. I will be content as a blind, flightless pupa.

I will accept the notion that all I have done I have done for no one, including myself. It will remain hidden, weighing down the bookshelves in my mind. The drawers filled with poetry will be thrown out in exhausted haste. The paintings will occupy thrift store bins. The songs will remain unsung. The rest will help fill up the local landfill over which, many years later, a new subdivison will be built.

So I research expatriation to islands.

I seek places that welcome the weird. I listen to other expats. I remember those rare visits when I traveled far away and wonder why I returned.

In some ways I never did. I am still there. My eyes rove across the satellite images trying to find me.

I have left a piece of me wherever I have visited. Will the fragments ever return to me again?

So I seek an ocean oasis where the sum total of my existence is to rest, with no one and nothing to press in on me, except the warm breeze off the sea, my dreams like sea turtles crawling across the warm sand and disappearing forever into the deep blue.

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