The Privilege of Leaving

When we met
I was searching
for the lost privilege
of getting to decide
how to arrange my life.

I knew I wanted you,
and I wanted to go
to that furthest extent,
chasing young love again,
reconciling with myself.

What I saw in you
was a change of fates,
a retreat from the noise,
but also a beautiful soul
ripe with muse-like inspiration.

I’d felt that feeling before,
the crossroads of my displacement,
the capitalism of time
clashing with the currency of people,
but never who love and ultimately leave.

I was leaving you
well before you could leave me,
even and especially
while escaping my previous life,
boing back and then exiting again.

The trouble with leaving
is it means arriving some other place,
and the least I could do
was hold that knowledge
and let it complicate the experience

To write about it now,
however small these words may be
against history,
is to revisit 
but to revisit one must also leave.

Lastly, leaving is never ending
because when you stop leaving
you stay
and that has its own consequences
but I am still here.

The place between staying
and leaving
is called longing,
and that is where I will reside
for the rest of my life.