It’s been forever since I checked in.

Mostly I’ve been listening to The Kills, enjoying the strange new sun, encountering doom less often, learning how to untangle my doubts from the footpath. Chatting on skype, organising my life through my phone, missing the alerts, over analysing fairly simple occurrences, falling into season 5 ‘Good Wife’ addiction, losing my cool with google maps, getting fish pedicures, freaking out over claims the fish carry viruses, flip flopping in love, flapping out of love, flying straight back. Taking photos of anything I eat that includes something green to show my mum her little girl is looking after herself, finally starting to notice the abundance of fences, wondering if the fences keep the children in or the adults out, or the gardens in and the dogs out, or the basketballs in and the traffic out? Wondering a lot. Wandering down familiar roads recalling when they were strange. Counting how many months I’ve been away on both hands. Stretching my hands out looking for signs of wisdom, following the lines of my palm into the air, onto my wrist, out past the street. Eliciting conversation in terrible places, surveyors outside Sainsburys, cat woman shaking on bus, lost tourists. Clingy symmetrical vines. Treating mango like hunks of gold, like Charlie treated chocolate, talking about ‘home’ as though I am living in exile, a refugee of paradise. Understating my homesickness with the aid of said flip flop love and my discovery of half-pints, now there’s a way to drink a lot in polite little bits. Uncovering a mass of unresolved fears, joy, ideas, tendencies, habits, meeting people two years younger than me and hearing myself say ‘enjoy it’ as though I am 100. Reading my poems wondering who wrote them. Writing new poems wondering who reads them. Articulating brand new truths in a daring, happy fashion. Gormless revelation of poet as living creature. Wondering a lot. Using the self checkouts at express supermarkets, feeling very pleased with myself. Walking through markets feigning confusion, oh no, here I am at the Turkish delights, I am so confused, I guess I will get some (brilliant!) getting used to meeting more Kiwis than I ever did in New Zealand. Getting doubly used to strange urges for jafas and pineapple lumps, I never had these urges at home. Getting triply used to the complexities of home, to return to leave again, to become a home of my own and for that to be just fine. Divulging in great rants new age truths, happiness bar graphs, Ted talks that have changed my life (in the last week) why I can’t stop watching the live stream of the Pistorius case, how much I finally understand the effort it takes to be miserable, how little effort it takes to smile, the absence of enough words to track the insanity of love, how fond I am of falling, how much I want to fail forward, how little time I’ve spent on the outside of my ideas, what it has been like to drown in the promise of ones own abyss, the ships there parting space like waves of lacquered black, and it was cool and it was real to swim down to the bed of myself, all those times to prise unearth some grain of buried fate.. look look.. look at this flake of gold I pulled myself a part for, see how it catches the light?