Foreign Country

"The past is a foreign country..." - L.P. Hartley

It's only been two weeks,
but, already, you have faded
to a myth; one, solitary sketch
on a Grecian urn. And that
all-important line between
fact and fiction is blurred.

Like a lonely pilgrim,
I have travelled to a new country.
Now, speaking a different language,
I am absorbed by another culture –
my mother tongue rusts
with disuse.

Immigrants dream in their
old languages. But, just as babies
learn, remember, whilst they sleep,
I am memorising new faces, names,
life stories and places - and so
I don't dream in the familiar.

I am not forgetting... I just don't
remember like I used to; this shift
is happening much quicker than expected.
As if, in the early hours, someone
climbed through a window into my mind
and rearranged the furniture.

A month ago, I pictured northern mists,
and dragging myself past a grey lecture theatre,
carrying a broken heart as if I were cradling
my own entrails, trying to keep it all together.
But... no. Not so. Why am I so scared
to admit I am... happy here?

Yet, you know, you are standing,
a pinpoint, on a different continent.
I am walking the Earth's axis
in one, vast circle... And, the further
away from you I go, the closer
to you I get.