I return to Slippery Rock.
I veer off Main Street and drive up a hill
to a building with pillars called Sentinel.
I move all of my stuff into my one room flat
time to finish college with a bonus semester.

I still feel transient—like I’ve been jettisoned back
into the center of the storm—only to be spit out by
an imaginary blue whale to the other side of my life,
to a new season I never really imagined myself living in.
Maybe I forgot to pull myself out of the washing machine.

Is this new space my home or just a temporary dwelling?
I hang up my blue striped curtain over the white blinds.
I set up my computer on a desk with a cherry wood finish.
I plug in the TV I rescued from that pawn shop in Florida.
I open and shut the white cupboard doors above my bed.

I think about all the dead leaves and how they
were blown off branches by the summer wind.
They pile up at the bottom of your swimming pool
—fast asleep in the cool water of some September.
When it’s quiet I think about who hears me.

Will I ever awake into a September
where sunlight belongs in my story?
Will I ever evolve into an actualized version of myself
that’s confident enough to know where to go next?
Then again—that—probably wouldn’t be me—now would it?