Leaving a place
you have grown attached to
is like a long term amnesia
Missing it before it is gone
A feeling of dislocation even before you pack up and leave
It is knowing that the city will change
its face always mutating
a layer of skin
which grows and moults and grows again
knowing you might miss those gaps
that after that time travel
you return to patch the gap
dig beneath the skin
To fill in the empty blanks
with memories, wrongly remembered
past, which never existed
imagined.

Uprooting is a common word
but it is never a total detachment
but a thin web like a spider's
attached to some part of your being
to some insignificant thing
which you might pick up again one day
by chance
The root stays only the leaf is
blown
to
fate knows where
precariously hanging on the edge
knowing that the next wind might take it off
to some great unknown
at that precise moment
it thinks of the city in past tense
Old
Home
Once upon a time
I forget