The Weight of Elsewhere 'Part One'

Letters from Borrowed Ground 'Part One' --- To: Myself (Three Years Ago) Date: Every Night Status: Never Finished Focus: Warning Dear Dreamer, Tonight, I dig up buried footsteps, each stone beneath my feet heavy with goodbye. The coffee grows cold in my cup as I write this at 3 AM, watching snow fall on a street whose name I still can't pronounce. You think you know what leaving means— but you have no idea how shadows walk backward through forgotten maps, how your mother's voice will sound thin and distant through phone static, how you'll memorize the cost of international calling cards. I want to tell you that roads forget names too, that compasses spin wild when they lose true north. But maybe you need to discover the weight of elsewhere yourself. --- To: The City I Left Behind Date: October 3rd, 2024, 4 AM Subject: Guilt Focus: Betrayal My dearest city of closed doors, Your street signs fade to unfamiliar letters in my dreams, your windows no longer reflect my hurried footsteps rushing to catch the last bus before curfew. I smell your bakeries in every foreign morning— warm sangak bread that tastes like childhood, cardamom tea that my landlord here calls "exotic spice." But I also remember the silence that swallowed midnight knocks, the way conversations died when strangers entered cafés, the headlines that shifted faster than currency rates. *Even the trees want to leave* Your plane trees bend toward a sky thick with unspoken words, their roots pulling back from earth where jasmine once carried my mother's lullabies and now carries the weight of what we couldn't say. I'm sorry I chose elsewhere over the sound of your call to prayer, but I couldn't choose the weight of your silence. ---