Situated Between Two Worlds

–Written sometime during my two-week spring break, 2023–

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The Buddha has lost its head.

Sitting idylly, cross-legged with its hand gently placed in its lap, a piece of itself is situated in front of it. Its cool gray body is covered in cracks.

An artifact of time passed.

The tip top of its head lays exposed, the solid rock of its interior peeking through.

It, though, does not seem to mind, the girl realized as she took another bite of her breakfast and sat back again to gaze at the slow moving clouds gliding effortlessly across the sky. Her chair sat a foot away from this statue, and together, they rested.

Situated between two worlds, the girl for two weeks cocooned herself at home. Sleeping soundly, exposed skin sprawled out underneath the covers, she rested. Eating good food around the dinner table, her family there too, she feasted. Laying on the couch, transported into the world of whatever book she picked up, the story, snuggled up between the lines, came to life.

For two weeks, the girl floated through her home. Arriving from college down South, it was almost as if she stepped through the door and reunited with her old self. A quick switch of mind and body, she left thoughts of classes and frat parties at the door mat, and quite easily– almost too easily– undressed and slipped into the flesh of childhood.

It still fit, but not quite right. Almost like when a pair of pants fit until one tries to button them. One can keep them unfastened, hidden with a jacket, but still, the pants just don’t fit quite right. After a few days this dawned on the girl, and left her sitting with an uneasy feeling.

The days that made up these two weeks at home flew by with ease. Life was simple here. But the cloudless, sunny skies couldn’t help stop the darkening feelings that hovered over the girl, as she sat back in her chair, eating her breakfast with the silent statue.

“Why must this happen,” she said aloud, almost believing the buddha would answer.

“Why must my home not feel like home, but just a place to pass through?”

But of course, she knew why.

Walking out the door last fall and leaving home meant it may never be the same upon return. “I’m situated between two worlds,” the girl pondered quietly. “Forever my home, but not anymore my world.”

Toggling between the long-lost memories in this very garden, or the nooks and crannies of this house on the dead end street of 50th, to the newly-made ones in the mountains of San Luis Obispo, the girl came to terms with the situation.

“I must return, I’ve outgrown my permanent place here.”

A piece of the girl felt dislodged from her self, just like the buddha. Coming home dislodged this in her, an artifact of time passed, years lived. But, of course, in that moment, the clouds kept rolling away, time ceasing to still. And together, they enjoyed the moment for what it was, and their places in it.