Permanence

Perhaps permanence

was always a story we told ourselves

to make time less frightening.

We build houses,

name streets,

draw borders through dirt

as though the earth has ever agreed

to belong to anyone.

But everything leaves.

Rivers abandon their banks.

Mountains become sand.

Continents drift quietly apart.

Even the stars we navigate by

are burning toward their endings.

So why should I be ashamed

of wanting to move?

There is a certain honesty

in carrying your life with you,

in owning only what you are willing

to bear the weight of.

You begin to understand

how little a person actually needs.

A roof for the rain.

Food for the body.

Something worth reading.

Someone worth talking to

when the road becomes long.

And suddenly,

home stops being architecture.

It becomes a temporary agreement

between yourself and the world:

I am here now.

Maybe that is all any of us

have ever been able to say.

We spend our lives planting ourselves

into people and places,

terrified that leaving means losing them.

But perhaps belonging

was never about staying.

Perhaps it is simply allowing a place

to change you

before you go.

To leave fingerprints on the world

and let the world

leave fingerprints on you.

So I will keep moving.

Not because I have nowhere to belong,

but because I have stopped believing

belonging requires permanence.

I am learning

that roots are not the only way

to know the earth.

Sometimes

you learn it better

with your feet.