I grew up in a culture that embraced physical touch. Then I came to America.

An all-around sad story. What a line, though: “A home is lost twice: first when you leave it and then again when you return.”

I grew up in a place that I never really considered home but it was as close as I had. I had roots, even if they were poisoned. Now when I go back I feel no connection to it at all; it’s just another spot on a map. That’s a real loss. I still carry with me the secrets of the river I knew so well, and treasured so dearly, but it’s no longer my river. It has passed to others now, including a me that exists no more and is dispersed across the universe via whatever echoes we leave as we go about being.

Every bend I knew then is still there, but as with Heraclitus I cannot step into that river again because I also cannot step into my past mind where that magic still lived.

I’ll never again see the mist rising above the water as dawn’s first tremulous proposition awakens the sky, tannic water sliding by my small boat with the sound of secrets unknown since the foundation of the world. I was there and felt it but the past remains as always where we can never reach it.