I'm coming home.

 

   Five weeks and I can still see the spectacular wood floor in the Iceland airport, feel the drone of the plane, and the memory of my first week in Germany back in my Grandparent's house (where every corner is filled with old memories and pictures of even older stories) makes me smile with a heavy heart. I remember how Frankfurt looked from the sky as we were landing and all I could think about through the haze of jet lag and weariness was, what will it be like, to be back again? The adrenaline, the white-knuckled fear that raced through my veins as I visited a German school and I had to stand in front of an entire class and read out loud, will forever be kept inside the treasure chest of my heart, because something was won that day. The first impressions of France still make me smile, they cascade through rivers of memories, floating on top, because the first person we saw with his stream of French that none of us understood welcomed us with open arms into his land, and now I cannot seem to tear myself away from the people I saw, or the places that turned my heart into a frenzy of wanting to see everything at once. And with all the laughter these past weeks, all the jokes made in Russian that I only halfway understood, the feeling of never wanting to leave but knowing I could never stay, and through the childish voices of my cousins, somehow the clock never stopped ticking and here I am again, five weeks later, and this trip just feels like a blink, a breath, a drawn-out sigh. Five weeks, and I am again saying goodbye. And as if I had drawn a map, I can keenly remember every sway and pounding of my heart, and every firework of laughter and the tears which were swallowed in premature goodbyes, but I am desperately afraid that I will forget the nooks and crannies of the hills that made me feel like I was coming home. That there was a mental image I was too busy to make, that I will soon forget how the village lights twinkled in a sleepy farewell.

Now I am coming home, home to everything that I have ever known for the past seventeen years, home to the beating hearts which light up the sky brighter than stars. (you people don't know how much you mean to me, and I don't know how to say it, I just hope you can hear it in my words) And maybe this is what it feels like to be so torn, not knowing which side to choose, which way is best. Here lives my family that I hardly know anymore and long to, but where my heart is, are the ones that know me better than I understand myself and love me anyway. But tell them all that I will be back, that this land is the backbone of my past, of the people that lived before me, and I will once again walk through the stone hallways of ancient fortresses and touch the grounds of majestic palaces. Wherever I go, a piece of this place will forever be seared into my story, into the stories that still burn my fingertips. 

I am coming home, and I can hardly wait.