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So Long, To(o) Long

Author: Joanna Stergiaki
Year: Hope

If to miss a place, you cannot be there, perhaps I shouldn’t go. Unable to exist in two, I live in neither I long to be – double the pine, triple the postcodes. And so – anchored elsewhere, somewhere new, a hinterland halfway – a harbour. Further above – if studying a map, in-between if noting division, chapter or stage.

Now, reaching the mouth of a quarter of a century, all has been washed up. Forgotten segments, calmer than yesterday but still meshed with debris and tied in ageing knots. Netted in yearning and abstaining – I remind myself that a place is the way it is because of what it lacks.

Never staying long, but to(o) long: long enough for islands to bicker in attempts to present more favourably – the other appeals when in the current and the same if reversed. All four departure and arrival gates cause confusion and comfort. Two heritages weigh on already sinking shoulders – a tourist, a visitor, a foreigner. Where do you dock if neither one nor the other?

So long, to(o) long and how thankful I am to be so, to wish to be elsewhere is the most promising one can be; combing through and treading on, buoyant in anticipation of the horizon – hopeful and at home in Scotland after being born in Greece and raised in England.