Page 46 - My Creative Writing Portfolio

46

COMING BACK TO SYDNEY

Often wonder
why I have returned to this place.

Was it because I once loved it—
its streets, its light,
its quiet promises?
Or because, thirty-three years ago,
I struggled here
to carve out a small space
for my existence?

Does a place remember
the sweat once shed upon its soil,
the silent worries carried
through its nights?
Do walls and pavements
hold faint impressions
of those who laboured
and hoped within them?

I left long ago.
Yet here I am again—
in a different avatar,
a different season of life,
no longer young,
no longer beginning—
but beginning again.

This time,
as an immigrant once more,
though older,
and perhaps less certain
of permanence.

I feel sometimes
like a speck of dust
lifted by the winds of globalization—
blown from shore to shore,
carried by forces
larger than intention.