Fragments of seeking

I seek comfort,

 but comfort eludes me...

 lost in a wilderness of chaos, 

desperately searching for that perfect sanctuary that feels like home,

 but exists nowhere. 

 The road calls,

 and I answer... 

midway through my escape,

 regret seeps in like a slow, persistent rain. 

Oh, my child— what restless spirit drives you?

 Home: now a foreign landscape. Unrecognizable. 

 The way souls leave transforms everything...

 just as autumn strips trees of their vibrant disguises, revealing raw, vulnerable branches. 

 I hide in proximity.

 Book a hotel near enough to touch memories, far enough to not be consumed. 

Close, but never aching.

 A deliberate distance.

 Home isn't home anymore. 

Heart trembles. 

Soul fragments.

 Craving a warm bowl of love

 (served as soup, never about the soup) It's about the emptiness the soup cannot fill.

 Routine once held me— 

a computer packed, study materials gathered, 

weekly rhythms that promised stability. Now? Nothing fits. 

 The drive home: hollow echoing with unspoken emptiness. 

 Will the key remember a door that barely recognizes me. 

 I find myself craving an old acquaintance, he arrives in a bottle dressed in crimson red, 

promisisng light for the duration of his visit.

 Medicine for a fevered soul.

 Brief reprieve for weary bones.

 More than a craving now. 

An intensity that burns. 

 Sometimes that and a shoulder to cry on is all that's needed to mend a tired soul. 

 I find myself wondering: Am I spoiled? 

A carousel of memories plays, 

NO. 

Just human. 

 Beautifully, painfully human.