I took a plane to Berlin, to breathe for a while.

Not that I have a lot to complain about – life flowing smoothly between

home-made dinners and ideas to put together in a life I get to choose.

But for some reason,

in this impeccable shoving of days like pearls in a thread,

I can’t seem to find balance and all those other phrasings to stay afloat.

So I get on trains and spend long nights in Nordic hostels of bunk beds and cheap drinks.

I look for what I want to hear in the words of those I happen to find along the way,

those things I don’t find the courage to trust – eternal promises I make with myself to plunge right into what I want and do it for real, this time.

Because this life I get to choose is waiting for me right there

on the seabed I don’t know the shape of,

under those layers of blue I keep having second thoughts about.

And I kick

and I shake

and I wiggle on this surface that now feels so tight.

And I wish I could just take a deep breath and row with who it is that I am and see what colour the seabed I dream about really is.

But for some reason, I hold tight to all trivial excuses and lighthearted talks,

stupid water wings I insist to wear not to go deep.

And I’m now drinking mint tea in an ordinary city,

yet another shot to find a place to call home, a space to fit in

– knowing for sure that all I want is to disappear in a line of bubbles flowing above my head, see the water get blue, black, and down, down a bit more,

touch the ocean floor

and grab a handful of sand.

And in that place so far from all ideas I’d ever painted in my mind until then

– in the furthest corner from what I’d ever known –

find home.

So here I find myself,

with miles under the soles of my shoes,

with the sketch of a butterfly given to me as a gift on the first day of spring.

Reminding me that spending too long anchored to the ground, you forget how to breathe.