Visitor

Same bus route. New numbers on it.

The shop that sold me sweets is a phone place now

and the phone place has been a phone place long enough

that the kids in it don't know it was ever anything else.

Everybody who stayed says "you look well"

in a tone I can't quite read

and I say the traffic wasn't bad,

which is what you say when you don't live somewhere.

And they're kind. They're so kind.

That's what makes it land —

Visitor here. (visitor here)

Visitor here. (visitor here)

In the actual place I'm from.

They put the good chair out and I sat in it like a guest.

Visitor here. (visitor here)

Nobody did this to me.

I did it by leaving, slowly, over years.

There's a version of me that never got on the train,

and he's alright, he's got a kid and a decent job,

and I have absolutely no right to feel sorry for him

and I do, and that says everything about me and nothing about him.

He asked what I was working on

and I made it small so it wouldn't sit between us,

and he noticed me making it small,

and that went unmentioned as well.

There's no argument to have.

That's the strange bit — there's nothing to fix —

Visitor here. (visitor here)

Visitor here. (visitor here)

And I'm welcome, which is worse —

welcome's what you are somewhere you used to just be.

Visitor here. (visitor here)

I gave this up for something,

and the something's been good,

and this is what it cost.

Nobody warned me it was a trade.

I thought you got to keep the old one in a drawer

and take it out at holidays, intact.

It doesn't keep. Places don't keep.

They carry on without you, which is their right.

Visitor here. (visitor here)

Visitor here. (visitor here)

So I'll be a good one — stay the full two nights,

ask about people properly, learn the new street names.

Visitor here. (visitor here)

It's not a lesser thing to be.

It's just not what I thought I'd be.