Just a Sapling

I spell something wrong in my own language. It’s a bit jarring. I remember when I was a kid and they’d praise me for my vocabulary. That was a different lifetime ago, though. I Google the word, and it helps.

I go home, and I’m tired. I go to my room, where I dream about my old room. I try putting some of the same decorations back up, but it doesn’t feel right.

And I think about what does feel right. But I don’t come up with much.

There’s a gap, you know. A gap left by this weird dissonance between hearing about how moving was for the better. About how these sacrifices were to give me opportunities. And then feeling like it made things worse. Feeling guilty about not enjoying these so-called privileges and opportunities… Feeling forever ungrateful. I’m not an ungrateful child. I wasn’t, anyway. Or maybe I was. I don’t feel so connected with whoever I left behind that day.

But a lot of it just doesn’t feel right. This displacement is unnatural. Can I really attribute this to moving? Can I say it’s not only the consequences of growing up? I’m not sure. But I walk the streets of Florida, and I think of the palm trees you see everywhere. Put in place like they belong, when I know they are from somewhere else. And they grew up all the same, except not the same. I, too, was just a sapling. I dare not check the state of my roots.

It's my birthday. I try not to think about who I wish was here with me. I look at the lit candles, and, as happens often, my attention is stolen by a bittersweet memory. I wonder if my friends remember that sleepover, pulling an all-nighter on her driveway, a big blanket sticky with candy, stargazing. My friend, she grabs the steel-wool sponge, ties it to a string, sets it ablaze. In the dead of the night, she swings it, and it’s beautiful, the embers flying, a quiet spectacle. This candle wick’s fire pales in comparison. But I smile and I blow it out, and for a minute I can’t tell if the post-burning smell is real, or a phantom sense.

In the car, I sing an old song. I notice the twins don’t know the lyrics. I don’t hold it against them, but it hurts— how much do they remember? I can’t help but feel as though I failed them. The isolation burrows a little deeper.

I’m out with some friends, but I can’t quite follow the conversation. My chest weighs more than usual. I think about sharing what I think with them, but this is a feeling that can’t quite be shared. It’s a feeling you either feel, or you don’t. It’s a feeling you can’t ever explain. So I stay quiet. And then I write. And instead of feeling better, I feel defeated. I feel a coward, for I know there are deeper layers to this, that I’m simply not brave enough to face.

I feel missing. Void. Because I can sense this is a feeling that harbors, and doesn’t sail.

But then mom says, “Hanna, vem fazer café!”

And it’s not the same. But it’s something.