I draw my knee up to my chest
and lower my head so that it rests there.
Faded purple flower stitchings
stare up at me from my rug and
the sweet voice of Areti Ketime
drifts thickly through air,
reminding me of a time
I can’t possibly remember,
but a time, nonetheless, of quiet pride,
a time not my own,
a time that isn’t now.

I imagine I’m crouching somewhere else,
in a rickety, wooden old place,
dimly lit and hosting strange company.
My heart swells ever so delicately with nostalgia,
each knowing pluck of bouzouki
infiltrating my thoughts,
as though it weren’t just a recording
neatly streaming through the internet.

What I imagine, so briefly,
is the wanderer’s life:
distance, floating, subtle melancholy,
lingering in the background.
It appeals to me,
pinching my heart so that it
swells even more than it has.
But no, I think dually,
I don’t want that.

I want something to anticipate,
something that will emerge glittering
against the grey bleakness that is now.
I want normalcy returned to me,
for it to sew shut the gaping tear
in my family quilt.
I want the sheer volume
of my father’s presence
to fill the house once more.

My brother finishes homework in the next room.
Downstairs my mother corrects papers,
punching grades into her computer
with singular clicks and clacks.
Yet, upstairs, I remain stooped in thought,
the emptiness of the room diagonal from my own
hovering over my shoulder.
The soft music reminds me wryly
that ‘it’ will get better.
But it will never be the same.

It will never be the same.