Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life] by Bruce Smith

1.
Back home. My body is here, I know it, but I am somewhere else. One thousand and ninety miles between here and there. The clock is running but I am one hour behind.

2.
I am back home, and I have shed the cloak of a tourist and put on the hat of a storyteller. I talked for hours, it seemed. And then I fell to bed the moment I entered my room, as if a body hurtling towards water, or falling from the sky. My sleep was dreamless.

3.
You’re home now, I tell myself, but a voice in my head asks, when do we leave again?

4.
A few years ago, V. told me—maybe T. stands for traveler. A prayer on my lips: too soon, too soon, too soon. But also: thank you, thank you, thank you.

5.
I am back. I am home. This is my life. But maybe—maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life]
Bruce Smith

I closed the book and changed my life and changed my life and changed my life and one more change and I was back here looking up at a blue sky with russets and the World was hypnotic but it wasn’t great. I wanted more range, maybe, more bliss, I didn’t know about bliss. Is bliss just a rant about the size of the bowl? The trance was the true thing, no, the rant, no, the sky, now, that icy whiteness.

—

(from Poets.org)