to belong

There are few places I belong: my therapist’s office, the grocery store (sometimes I just go to be with all the lonely items that never get chosen), my bathtub.

I keep wondering: how do you know if/when you belong to a place? I’ve come back “home” as a visitor. This was the place I lived for longer than any other as an adult. I know these streets. When I get lost, I know how to find myself. I know where to get the best dumplings, cocount bun, used clothes. I know the blocks where more people leave things out for others to take. I know where I have fallen in love, where I lost them, where I fell down from a panic attack and needed nine stitches.

I am old(er) now. Less bar hopper and more bench dweller. I am not looking to have any one night stands; I much prefer to be alone with my notebook or library book.

I don’t quite belong “home” where I live now and this place is not quite it either.

But.

Here, is where I can eat a bagel that is fluffy and soft like my belly. And here is where I can take a train to more museums than I can count. And here is where I can walk across a bridge and feel like I am in a different city. Here is where I write, where the words find me. Where the poets are. My bandmates: Eric and David. The Gowanus, smelly but persistent. Here is where I can land when I need to find the poems clogged inside me.

Right. Here.