Ripple

I heard that we bring a part of where we’re from

to every place we go,

that our starting point was never stationary

but shapes our every movement.

Like a ripple in the water,

everything that follows has echoes of its origin.

The midwestern breeze still lingers in my exhales;

my mother’s mannerisms rest on my cocked hip.

Every hand that I shake meets the sternness

that my father spoke into me,

and every city I inhabit is seen

through the fog of that hometown skyline.

Memories are fractured to fit in a suitcase,

and fragments of past live on in our pockets, but

maybe our hearts were meant to be in motion

to remind us of where they began.

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