Palimpsest

Lucile Tassi

If I walked five hundred miles through the driving rain,
I’d still arrive a stranger, saying my name in vain,
Every room I enter tilts a little to the right,
Every crowd a void in which I shine bright.
I have slept in borrowed beds and borrowed skin,
Left my fingerprints on doors I’ve never been,

A palimpsest of messages on the wall we share,
Someone else’s longing written under mine in there.
Lord, I’m one, but one of what, I cannot say,
Every map I follow folds the other way,
I have sung the choruses but missed the key,
Clapped a half-beat off from everybody.
If I walked five hundred more through the cold and dark,
I’d still be the footnote, never the remark,
The parenthetical, the pause, the second thought,
The thing that’s almost wanted but was never quite sought.
There’s a language in the laughter, there’s a grammar in the grin,
And I’ve studied every textbook, I can’t conjugate their kin,

A palimpsest of messages on the wall we share,
My ink keeps bleeding through the words that were already there.
Lord I’d walk, Lord I’d walk, Lord I’d walk five hundred miles,
Through a thousand other doorways, past a thousand other smiles,
And I’d fall down at the threshold of a place I’ve never known
And still feel, bone-deep, unbelonging,
still feel,
home is not a home