I often sit out on my front porch in a pair of boxers and silver basketball shorts, shirtless, watching life creep by at the corner of 11th and A streets. There are blacks and whites and brown skinned men from places I probably can't imagine, and I'm reading a nutrition science book, watching them mull about in front a sad but proud Iraqi grocery store; a tiny outpost--against what I'm not sure--from where their sing song voices come floating out the door and through the air like horses bobbing up and down on a carousel, sounding much to me like my English might have sounded to a passerby in Tokyo: foreign, exotic, tantalizing.

I sit on that porch and in my mind I romanticize their tiny community, so tightly knit and so far from home. Men greet each other with a kiss on the cheek and a word or two I can't comprehend. They work hard and they have faces that reflect that hardness, with sharp lines and deep, dark valleys.

It makes me feel lost in my own country, as if I have nothing that I belong to concretely, no anchor to weigh me down as waves beat against my body.

My eyes have been hurting a lot lately.

When I look up or down or left or right, it causes this itty-bitty pain somewhere near the surface of my temple. Always on the left side. I think it must mean something.

Something about my direction not being focused.

After this weekend I've come to feel dirty, like I need a shower for my soul.

It's something I can't do for myself. I need someone to do it for me, someone pure to come and cleanse me and make me whole again, someone to weigh me down.

After this weekend, I realized that I'm ready for it--for her.

I've also realized that I am in no way whatsoever ready, for her.

I'm prepared to move on but I'm not ready to let go.

As this year has progressed, I've watched myself turn into a lot of things I never thought I would, or should be, and I'm no longer sure what's right for me.

I wonder when I'll be able to take this picture down from my cubicle.