Migration

[vixengrl]

Sometimes the soul
longs to come home again--
even to places no longer on a map.
To places you last saw exploding
apart, to people
who unraveled at you
or sometimes, to your knowledge,
decidedly off-stage.
The homefires kept burning
consumed those places
alive in doubtful restless memories,
those halls that seem
solid in dreams;
and the smell
of cooking and the faces
that are as your own in a mirror to you
yet are in life no more.
And neither is
all of you.
You have gone
where once you never hoped to tread,
but the return is impossible
fraught with
miscues and dread.
Can you ever go home again?
Of course.
Fit?
Never again.
A new world claims you
yet know
you claimed it first.