i think i forgot how to drive so i’ve been doing laps around your old neighborhood.

partly because i know everything’s changed and partly because i know nothing’s changed and all i’ve ever known is how to go in circles.

tell me, has time really stood still or have i just been gone too long to move with it?

i saw your mother in the supermarket and i was sort of hoping she wouldn’t recognize me but she did. of course she did.

i tell her that i like the city and she says that it suits me.

i half expected you to round the corner with a jar of cranberry sauce and my heart clutched in your fist but you don’t.

you round the corner empty handed and you are taller than i remember but you still have the same boyish face.

you tell me everyone’s missed me and i know that’s not true. you ask me if this place seems boring now.

i laugh instead of saying that no one there knows my name, that i can’t go a day in the city without thinking of coming back, that i sometimes long for the things i know like the back of my hand.

you ask if i’ll be at the restaurant tonight and i say yes even when i shouldn’t.

i leave without any of the things i needed. i haunt the restaurant like a ghost five hours later, floating past old friends who just keep getting older.

i hang out with people who have never not been bad for me and i don’t call my dad’s house ‘home’ because i want to believe that it’s not anymore.

i want to go home and i want to run away from home and i don’t think i know either home well enough to keep calling it that so i stay.

i stay because i said i’d be here and we both know i’m not the one to break a promise.

because i’ve been keeping the porch light on in case you stopped by.

because you are the only thing in this town that i swear has never changed (even though i wanted you to).

because old habits don’t die hard, they sink in their teeth and never let go.

old habits split me down the middle like a knife,

and old habits greet me at the front door of your apartment after thanksgiving dinner,

and old habits taste more like home than anything on that damn table.