091

most times, wherever i am, i think of somewhere else. and most times, it's only when i'm far away that i realize why all those pillows are sewn, with lace borders and pink letters, "home sweet home." for now, galway really is home. and naturally, it became home while i was away. my peach pre-fab house, with the dog next door that humps every leg getting out of a car in the parking lot, the door that took me a month to figure out how to lock, green almost-vinyl curtains, the green almost-linoleum carpet, the empty milk cartons in the fridge, the expired yogurt, the towels that leave their threads on you after a shower, the view of the fat herons crushing the upper branches of the trees out back near the construction site.
the past two weeks have given me a lot of chances to picture me at home somewhere else. i could be another cosmopolitan pair of jeans strutting down temple bar in dublin, on my way to somewhere beautiful. i could be a hidden soul, just making my way, understated and proud in belfast. i could be a stable-worker, with my own cottage on a thousand-acre estate on the mile-wide bay on the ards peninsula. i could be sharing a house with the rock musicians hitching a ride with me into sligo, pop: 3,000, the town tied for next in line to become the fifth city in ireland. or i could be chained inside the Seaforde Gardens and Butterfly Exhibit grounds, desperate to find an exit after the gatekeeper has gone home and locked me in. like last week. but for now, i live in galway, with a poet, a Taurean lass and a Brazilian surfer. it's pissing weather. and i don't mind.

and then i think of the beach, and it all goes to shit.
perhaps i will wake up enlightened tomorrow.