They say you only know what you’ve had once it’s gone
But as I stare across a flickering landscape of buildings shouting their existence in neon
I know that my heart had belonged in and away from this place I called home
Because though its absence which makes the heart grow fond
And a grounded starscape that studs the horizon is a token
its familiarity beckons as the lights flash off on, off on

The truth that struck as my sweat leaden body sat down was that maybe I was never found
In a place I called home because it was where I’m from
Of course I loved it all as all I knew but can we call a ladder tall if it only has one rung?

Home was home true, but Afar so quickly grew the same too that something must have slipped through,
It wasn’t that my idyllic upbringing, the seaside beach tide play times,
The milk bar walks that seemed so far but not a droplet had let drop by the time we were back in the backyard, ice cream eaten with full heart and stomach,
The ball games and called names, the drama class and class act drama, the loves that were never the same, ranging from the inane to those which made sun when it rained
That all this and more remained unsure, no, they just left me wanting more, so just as you don’t know what you had until it’s gone, you don’t know what you don’t have until you leave
And the sleepy familiarity of a life left behind, the one that the off on flickers embed to my mind
Put short, it binds, and though not unkind, if I could not leave I could not forge forward or receive the life I always wanted to lead

I belonged where the waves lap quietly rhythmically singing
But the rocks that make the foreground to the man made monuments which can’t stand the tests of temporal truth
And time breaks those rocks too,
Permanent slumber or permanent fire destroy or make nothing of a person, a lover
The flickering lights which scream not to be hit don’t do so in a fit of self preservation
It’s the language they speak, as they reach for the heavens where rats of the air bite

I want to be hit and I had to be hit to leave
My fellow skyscraping fellows, ambition keeping their vision mellow
They are left dreaming of the sky, and when I return and ask them: how are you, what are you doing, who are you seeing, where are you going
The question unbidden that forms on my lips is why, why settle for less than you could be
By staying in the sleepily similar, the world of off on lights that shine by night
These lights that in all my days I’d never stopped to appraise
And that now as I leave in a daze, I am unfazed, unchanged.