Things in the Wrong Places

This week, I caught three incongruous, surreal scenes:
an easy chair, part of yet apart from the park benches,
the line blurred between living room and public spaces;

a hula hoop caught in a leafless tree
yellow like any other bright spot in a street scene,
but a vestige of yesterday afternoon,
and transient;

a soaked and smiling bear,
painfully oblivious to the rain and the pigeons,
carrying on, blindingly positive, unwanted.

They were all scenes that stopped me, and I would have stared even without my camera.
Out of place.

They made me think of the times I've felt out of place and incongruous. In college I realized that, once you study abroad, you'll never be in the right place again.
I threw myself into loving England,
but I didn't quite fit in there, as happy as I was. That's just the way it is.
The day that I came home, I looked at the mail that had piled on my desk,
while my mom made my first American meal.
I opened a letter from Oxfam, and the 8.5 x 11 sheet looked like a square after months of A4.
I came downstairs and desperately asked my mom if paper was always that shape,
and she didn't know what to say.
I went back to my College in Farmland but no one else had changed. I missed England.
"Don't worry; you'll get over it,"someone said,
which only made me more upset.

After college, I lived in Declining, Now Reemerging Port City in my Rolling Hills, Tidewater and Peach Blossom State. I worked with migrant workers and immigrant youth.
I threw myself into their celebrations.
I related to them because I missed England and they missed Michoacán, San Marcos, and Toluca.
I was neither mexicana nor guatemalteca nor quite the American I had been.
After those two years I moved again for grad school; living in a small city reminded me of England, and I missed tostadas and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Then I found hurricanes and low-flying herons in Shrimp Town;
I caught throws in the City Where the Water Bends and discovered that I actually like fried oysters. I
became accustomed to tremendous storm clouds and never ending sunsets in the huge, flat sky.
The beauty took my breath away but I was different, an outsider.
I came home for a week each Christmas and a week each summer and I ate mid-Atlantic water ice or egg bagels.

Now I've been in City of Crowds and Concrete and Challah for a year and I love it.
I can go for walks every day. Every restaurant has a unique vegetarian option. I have not yet been able to go to every museum I want to see. But my breath catches in my throat when I think of herons against the storm-clouded sky.

Every place I go changes me, and for the better; every place leaves its indelible mark on me. On Friday, I'm flying to City Where the Water Bends for a wedding, and then I'll drive out to see old friends in Shrimp Country. I'm so happy, thinking of driving on the roads that I still see when I close my eyes.   I imagine myself under the orange trees again, at home and out of place, as I always will be.

England