I realize now that I should’ve stayed

in Europe, the sweat dripping down

every inch of me & sticking

Two foot showers never enough

to feel truly clean.

I’ve been different since Europe,

but not in the way I thought I’d be.

I forgot how to breathe American air,

forgot how to love American soil

or American people.

I miss your mother

more than I miss you,

& I wish you weren’t in all the pictures.

I thought I’d love it,

but I can’t think about swimming in Bavarian lakes

without feeling how my wet hair seeped into your sweater,

how the wool warmed me from the inside out.

A thunderstorm along the Champs-Élysées,

a telltale sign to stay right there

but we didn’t listen.

I wonder if we’d stayed there,

would we have made it

another year?

Rain dripping down every inch of me,

diluting all that binds me to this place, to these people.

I wonder about this American Dream,

the idea that with hard work we’ll be rich.

I wonder about the validity of it all,

how I’d give my left arm to find success.

I wonder about the idea of happiness,

how they told me I'd find it.

I wonder about lying.

About how regardless of the stones under our feet,

we’d fall apart in the same way.

Soil looks the same when it’s broken down into atoms,

so small you want to cry

at the pointlessness of it all.

I tried to melt us together, binding & twisting,

hoping beauty might fix us.

But these pages can’t hold us together

& neither could Europe.