September comes. What a weird summer it has been. My hometown is much colder than I remember. As the years went on, I became much more detached from it. I don't know the names of people I keep bumping into. They don't know what those places, which they walk past, mean to me. Maybe this is how it should be, the purging of irrelevant history to give a chance to the new.
I guess I always yearned to leave this place and start fresh. Now that I've had a chance to do that, I'm realizing that the issue was never about leaving. Because when I inevitably come back to this place, it's more hollow than how I last left it. Parents getting older, the apartment getting more stale, and static settling in. The forgetting. The dust, gathering over a hopefully well-spent decade.
What I probably wanted was to leave some people behind, and find more compatible ones. The place was never the question. I still struggle to find a solution to the bigger question. But I've stopped running away. Pure honesty is what I need to have. To myself, and to others.
~bartender, some nice tea, please. And some sugar, for old times' sake.