Sentences about the end of exile

My body fills out its own space again. All systems are a go: the senses peak; the circulation spikes; the water flows. I can feel the health of my composition coming back with every warm hour that passes.

To be back in a house where my name is still scrawled in pencil on a pillar next to the front door.

To walk a neighbourhood where every step could lead to being spirited away by an enthusiastic thirteen-year-old, and then treated to lunch and three hours of socialization.

To greet with sweaty hugs and kisses. I must've given and received fifty cheek kisses already (there's this cool move where you can do both at once).

See, my blood is worked into the paint on these walls. It's there in the form of  the little murdered mosquitoes and the splattered contents of their bellies.

The children I used to teach are now adolescents, and the adolescents I used to lead in youth groups are now teenage parents. Time passes. Lives are condensed. Many die young, but those left behind love younger, too, to make up for the losses.

To have a dollar in your pocket and eat for two days. Not because life is that cheap, but because poverty makes for generosity. And you're surrounded. By both.