cowboy boots

i will search for them when i go home

for no more than thirty dollars at value village

i will eat sour patch kids and fruit leather

i will park my battered little green car in the wide wide parking lot of glendale mall and marsh grocery store and

i will buy things i know i do not need

i will eat a hearty breakfast most days,

with bacon and syrup

i will wrap presents and sing carols

i will show julien the pretty houses on meridian street where

i will never live and the big schools that look so unfriendly from the outside

i will watch videos of forgotten recital routines, full of tongue biting and bad pirouettes

i will eat perfectly salted popcorn at the movies on christmas day

i will chase the ducks on the canal in broad ripple and

i will drink hot chocolate with my mother and cocktails with my father after church

i will show him where my grandparents used to live and the places where i fell in love and

i will do all of these things that remind me of home

and then

i will go home again