Homestead

When she moved to this town,

This girl didn't plan to stay;

Rather, she set up camp and bedsack

To learn and explore and play.

She really grew up here in this town:

Finding her wings and making mistakes,

Twenty-something, thirty-something,

Learning to breathe in her own skin.

Hers was a soul that chased the sun,

Passionately loved and fearlessly,

Uncompromisingly, and unapologettically

Determined to live a life worth writing about.

Unafraid to stare full in reflective surfaces,

This girl longed to know the good, the bad,

About herself, the world as she knew it,

Analytical and retrospective to a fault.

And yet here she is, forty-something,

With a husband and daughter,

And two step-daughters,

Contemplating the roots she's put down.

Did I stand still for too long?

Yet tomorrow, she commits to her first home:

Her campsite traded for something more permanent.

She is cognizant of the shifting within her own walls:

And wonders at this turn of events.

When did this happen to me?

Somewhere, along the way, things had changed

And this girl was a girl no more.

Strangely, awkwardly, this woman trades her tent 

For the uncertainty of the homestead.