Lyric

Salt at the edge of the window

Green soap drying by the sink

A ticket curled in my pocket

Faint blue ink

The places did not follow me

They loosened, thinned, and changed

A market roof became a rhythm

A border mark became a stain

I kept no perfect picture

No clean story I could tell

Only weather in my clothing

And the shape of each farewell

Rain in the cuff

Smoke in the hair

Spice on the seat

Heat in the stair

A coin with no use

A name said wrong

A morning that stayed

After I moved on

All these traces taught my hands

How to hold a softer weight

Not every road becomes a home

Some only teach the heart to wait

I left with almost nothing

But nothing did not leave me bare

The world had touched me lightly

And kept breathing under there

At dusk, I unpacked the silence

Laid my shirt across the chair

The room was new, the light was ordinary

Still, another sky was there

I found the storm inside the fabric

Found the dust along my lip

Found a stranger’s careful kindness

In the way my fingers slipped

Not souvenirs

Not proof for anyone

Not a map

Just small things

That changed the temperature

Of coming back

Maybe distance has a body

Maybe leaving has a sound

Maybe every borrowed doorway

Moves the floor beneath you now

I thought arrival meant an answer

Clear as glass and finally still

But I keep finding foreign sunlight

In the corners of my will

Small Proofs of Elsewhere

Hidden under skin

A life made wider

By what it could not keep within

No country held me fully

No room became my own

But every place I passed through

Left me less alone