Homecoming
By Susan Mardele
A fledgling at 18, I am no longer welcome at home.
I load my bindle into the trunk of a dirt-colored ’67 Pontiac
and begin my meandering course.
I’m terrified underneath but outwardly reckless,
trying to reclaim a sense of self.
The struggle to survive is consuming, the goal ambiguous,
my unmapped course plagued with roundabout detours.
As a migratory young adult, I seek asylum and belonging
in one forbidding corner or another, surviving by grace or will.
Provisioned with various scenes and actors,
I still seek that quantum leap forward
in something, somewhere or someone.
Undaunted, I clamber over anyone and anything in my way,
pulled forward by fear and longing, yet wearied by the struggle.
I think I can somehow extract joy and satisfaction
from people, places or things in the dusty echoes of my past
or the blurred contours of a shadowy future.
Into this driven existence, I startle to a whisper of quiet.
I trim my sails and dampen my wanderlust.
Standing still, bracing myself for disaster, I listen,
unclear about how quiet can outpace peripatetic seeking.
I begin to hear whispers guiding my steps and my heart.
One by one the wants fall away,
leaving me standing naked and alone but unafraid.
Arrival doesn’t look like I thought it would.
I figured there would be fireworks or a marching band.
Instead, there is peace and a sense of homecoming
in stopping the striving and coming home unto myself.