Homesick

An odd question from a man looks like he fits here, could be an old Grizzly Adams: "Are you homesick yet?"

And I didn't know how to answer, so I just smiled and said I wasn't.

"You will be. Give it a couple months."

I could have said, "I don't have a home to be sick for." It would have been close enough for truth.

But I'm homesick. I always am. For three acres and an old farmhouse and running pretend errands for my Grandma on my trike.

For a little bedroom in a little apartment and a pretty blonde-haired girl who I walked miles for just to buy flowers, to buy rose petals, and have her wake up surrounded by them.

I'm homesick for Athens, Ohio, at just a certain time, and unrequited things, and building a fountain and all of that.

I'm homesick for a flat in Albany, New York, and dreams of making a family that I dashed as carelessly as an oafish child crushes some innocent, small animal.

I'm homesick for Tonches Island, in a bright few younger years when I didn't feel like I didn't belong there anymore.

Hell, there are days I'm homesick for a GP Medium tent in the Kuwaiti desert, an old, abandoned school in Karbala and even a spot in Babylon. And there, most of the time, I was homesick for the blonde girl I'd given so many flowers.

I'm always homesick, no matter where home is, for someplace else. And maybe that just means I'm a damn fool, but I've noticed as I have more homes, I've stopped adding to the places I'm homesick for. I don't want to have any new place to wish for or any new people to miss. There's already plenty, and I've pledged my heart enough. New love just feels trite, false, because everyone I meet, I see three things.

I see this moment, the first hello, as I will remember it once I know them better. I see the middle, when we're like friends, and my face brings that pleased smile people always have for me. And I see the end, the always inevitable, as we fade into the memorial stories of one another. And so I shake the hand, ask repeated the name, and in my heart am already bidding them farewell.

And I am just so worn of these endless goodbyes hidden in "hello."