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

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.

MARGINALIA

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.