Excerpt from the book Garden of Exile

Exile

It’s like in your chest there’s a magnet, a magnet not for metal but for a
substance not available on this planet. So that it is constantly
pulling—angular little shocks like in the cartoons—at something it
will never draw close. Must be where they got the expression
aching for something. Because it is a kind of ache. To want something
and want something and. After a while you begin to feel intimate
with the missing part. You begin to feel it’s natural not to feel
pleased or satisfied. You look for houses in dead ends to live in.

And the heart keeps pace with it. You begin to miss everything.
All things past. You begin to feel as though you finally caught up
with them all: the perfume of night within a particular season, the
cardinal’s call from the tree by your window in an old house. You
put words to the tune: I want so much, I want so much, I want, I want,
I want, I want. A familiar neighborhood and how it felt to walk the
streets down their middles because it is so early no cars are out.
Views—of things, from things.

All those times that almost did it for you are here now for your
birthday, crowding their pointed faces around you for the
photograph. You invite them onto the train—the same train you’ve
been on as you’ve seen them pass by. You help them with the small
bags they carry, grabbing some by their elbows to steady them up
the steps. But you stay on the platform and wave to them this time.
The train’s windows are all busy with the colors they’re wearing.
You wave and wave in order not to let them know.