It was subtle but significant to anyone with undulled eyes. I’d come back to a land that had changed in my absence. Similar types of faces and places, familiar and foreign all at the same time. I didn’t realize how much I missed this place.

At first, I prepared to be bored, to settle into a routine without many distractions.
Soon, I was juggling unexpected opportunities with predetermined responsibilities.
Later, I questioned how I seemed to attract a certain type of experience.
Why, so typically, one of a more immediate and intimate nature?

Perhaps it’s easier to explain than I want to believe.
When the heart beats, regardless of the object of desire,
there can only be one of a few responses.
We can embrace the attraction or deflect it, but why oppose it?

Repression as with denial leads to frustration and is futile, whereas compliance allows one to live a life truly worthwhile. Then again, it’s that same thinking that drove me so far away to begin with. Then, again I realized how much I miss her grace.