Siren Song

You  were driven by something or someone or somewhere to get here.

Here where the trees grow with great design and care. Here where the time creates a great divide between the East and West. Here where people suppress their emotions and it spills out in unexplainable manners.

You don’t know what drew you in so deep. There was just the knowing and calling that pulled you forward like a daily siren call. And a question lingered inside of you.

Can I really leave it all behind? Can I really go that far? Can I be the person who does that?

You book a one way flight without connecting to the fact that the longest visa just means one month there. You know it’s expensive. It’s just a trade from one costly city to another costly country.

Your friends ask did you really need to pick somewhere so expensive. And you think yes because it calls to me. It’s the siren song of the soul. The place that must be visited and lived in for more than one week or two week vacation.

You know you don’t quite belong there as the relatives who never meet you had already disowned you. 

Your grandma couldn’t convince them of your worth. At such a tender age you mourned the family that didn’t want you. While missing the love the other side had for you, because the other half were mad that mom took you away. 

You chucked up the lack of family to just having a small one. You didn’t understand that racism and fear stole you from growing up with more love.

As a child you radiated love and drew people in. It was a bit overwhelming but also a bit loving and lovely. Because the lack of familia was replaced by an agape that felt just as deep.

You were rather transient in nature when it came to interacting and meeting people. Everything was a like a train stop that you enjoyed but there was always somewhere else to go, someone else to meet, something else to do. 

You wondered if moving would be your final to do. Like no where before felt like home because no where was home. And maybe home was so far off that you had been disconnected from it and distanced by accident.

Because even though your blood only ran one quarter deep while feeling full blooded until the white trailer trash in you starts trying to creep out. The pure lack of filtering seems like a problem for such a suppressed culture but that dichotomy in of itself is kind of the culture in of itself. 

Is this why you suspect it will feel like home? Is this why it calls to you? Is this why you want to move the last bit of the family and then sort out their burial like it will be magically and easy when their plots in the US? But you want everyone in Japan.

Will it be the resting place of peace, love, and joy for the whole family? 

You don’t know. You don’t care. You’re booking your flight. You’re booking their flights. You will find a way for everyone to stay somehow. 

And on your flight there was slight guilt because it was just the one ticket. I can go back for them you said. I will go back for them you promised no one verbally but in the back of your mind you know you should. 

 While there the feeling of ease and unease settles in, yes this home. But you worry you left two people behind who belonged who you were uncertain how to manage. 

Can I leave, you wonder? It’s not a matter of the plane ticket but the calling for the new and the leaving of the old stirs deep. Bringing them doesn’t feel easy. It’s where they were born but will they belong, you wonder. 

Does anyone belong anywhere? Will the transistor nature overcome me, you wonder? 

After a deep breath and sigh, you realize it doesn’t matter anymore. You have arrived where the siren song called you. And that’s all that matters right now. You can sort out the rest of it later on.