the missing chapter

I am in a part of my life filled with missing. I miss places far spread from each other and from me, I miss people. I miss them all at once, and individually and entirely in their present and past and future forms.
  I miss certain trees and how they sound in the winds, how they smell in the autumn, how they first appear in the spring.
  I miss landscapes....ones that evoke a kind of particular feeling that I can only store in the non-cognitive, only in the sensual.
   I miss certain bird sounds that exist only on green islands in the Pacific and on a Wild Continent which is still the New World.
   
   But really, and mostly I miss myself. So much I miss how it feels to be in my skin totally and fully, taking full stock of the consequences of being myself and feeling like I can afford it.
   I miss there being a space for song to escape my lungs and for skin to escape my clothes and for feet to escape my shoes.
    I miss feeling like I can go to a market alone or a bookstore alone and to feel expansively happy and glorious for being there.
  
  I miss my thoughts when they are uninterrupted by ads and screens everywhere I look and by noisy airplanes and train tracks and traffic in a constant symphony of civilized hell.
   I am not satisfied with who I have become to survive this place with it's deceptively beautiful beaches and weather and people.  I hope to find myself, like a sleeping beauty after all this is done. I hope to kiss myself on my lips and whisper "I love you" and at that moment I will awaken and the wandering one will dissolve into the being one and we will live together ever after.