future imperfect

If I had words for today, I would need words for yesterday, for such a string of yesterdays that stretch back and back and back. Back so far I could not tell you when they began or who began them or if there was a beginning because these days I cannot put my finger quite on anything, not words or emotions or thoughts, no matter how I try. 

So it goes that watching the bridge disappear in a square pattern behind us today, looking through that centre to the small dark green glimpse of beyond, feels like this. 

And so it is that the word belong appeared today in conversation and so it goes that I cannot help but sink into this place of recognition for me. 

And yes I know that we still have one week left in Dang and a further five days after that still back in Kathmandu, but at some point or other I am cornered by these thoughts on leaving. And I wrote and wrote and wrote today trying to figure out my thoughts on leaving and I asked how will I leave this place? 

These three weeks of momos and spicy sauces and dirt roads and black tea milk tea and rice and eating with my hands; of shopkeepers calling out namaste and children bowing their hands to their foreheads and children holding my fingers, the thin small boy from today who played with my hands and I chattered at him in English; of sunsets in hazy continental colours and the stars and the moon rise and squat toilets on bus rides and sunburns on my shoulders; of waving hands and reluctant smiles and saris and bangles and being white and market place bags of peppers and gourds; of prayer flags, incense, a perfectly un-placed sense of divinity and reality in the everywhere, the everyday; of bumpy roads and rusty jeeps and mud huts and water pumps and luxuries like clean sheets and air conditioning and kindness; of beads of sweat become rivers become laughter and glopping cement and the tink of bricks and sore hands and dirt on skin and river currents washing away; of serene cow faces and ugly bull horns and goats and goats and chickens and colour; of light, and skies, and people. The people. Always.

And I do not know how (i will leave)on the inside and yet: 

and yet I will. 

I will go and stay and leave and go and stay and leave until one day when I will ask myself how will I leave this place and I will not be able. I will not say, "I will", and I will not leave. But this day is not today, is not yet. I do not feel anything but the words 'I will' pressed deeper than everything else...maybe they were there first. Maybe I will always need them. Maybe. 

And maybe I am just thinking too grandiose for one small candle in this infinite universe and maybe I am. But maybe I am also trying to understand the how's that have grown into my journey, followed by the "will I leave" from that question.

And this happens, it does, especially since Nicaragua, this how game, this battle of the I wills. Because for all the leaving that is approaching like the dawn in a midnight sky, I know my I will's are followed by this, one word: return. 

But this one word I cannot promise for here, for now. I can dream it, for all the possibilities created in these last weeks, but I cannot say it. (Perhaps I never can, because life doesn't listen to plans, but the certainty scale is tilted differently in this case). 

And still. I know. 12 days. You do not need to tell me Kelly look at all the time you have! Look at it. Be there for it. 

This is something I do, know how to do. This I will do. This I promise you is not an earthquake for me; this does not stop me, to look at time, to acknowledge expiration dates....but that's not right now is it? There is nothing that will expire about this (except maybe my visa, technically), not within me, not without me. I just am telling you now that I see that I will leave. Soon. And I see it. And I see it. I know it is there. I know I will leave. 

It does nothing but sit in the corner and colour by number until I am back in an airport, and even then it will move behind me quietly and maybe just curl up under my seat and even when I return (.) home? it will still just be there on the edge, the periphery, noting all the ways here is not there is not this is not that, not 'home', not how it is called, changed by name now, and then it will sink in, with clean roads, and tall houses, and no chickens, and white people, and traffic lights, in the morning that does not sound the same and whole grain bread and catching my foot tan disappearing in socks, soft carpeted floors, my fingernails clean, no need for bottled water. 

This I know, and this I see. And I raise you the bet that however these next days go, they will not falter for knowing I will leave. This is like asking: How could we ever live less knowing we will die? Is not each moment designed exclusively for now and for you? 

I will not say carpe diem but I will say I do not have realize tattooed on me for nothing. 

Real eyes, like Buddha, like sunshine, like the divine you see in the you in me. 

I am here. 

I 

am here.

And I will leave.

And this is not that, is not perfect, is not wrong, is not the end.

This is. 

-k