You Can(‘t) Go…

Three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon:

My phone tells me, unprompted,

that if I left now I’d get home

9:30 PM tomorrow. Light traffic.

Problem: I’m already home,

sitting on the bed in my apartment.

Open it up, and see it’s trying

to send me back to California,

my childhood address.

No one lives there anymore.

Or rather, someone I don’t know

lives there. My parents moved north

and east. So did I; same directions,

a hundred times further.

They say you can’t go home again.

Google Maps says: yes, you can.

It’s a day and seven hours of driving,

of course, and there’s nothing left

for you there, but you could try it;

an old, broken instinct, like sea turtles

going back to the beaches where

they were born, hoping there will still be

a warm, soft place

to land.