Ireland

You creap into my thoughts like the rust on my bike as it breaths your humid, salty air. I love your pubs, even though I don't like Guinness. Your self-effacing humor shrugs off addictions, loss, abuse. I know you already. Sprinting through the cobblestone streets in the pouring rain at night on the left side of the road feels natural. Your steep single lain byways demand my smallest gears--even with my triple road chainrings on the front and mountain bike cog in the rear. Your dense forests trap your fog, dripping lush carpets of moss. I wander down main streets--past my bed time--and you are just getting started. You are both behind and ahead. You never caught on to industrial farming, and now all your small farms produce sought-after organic produce. Not red-lipped sirens in stillettos, your beauty is strength, warmth, humility.

Pale-faces, freckles, hair red or black, reminds me of love, fire, passion, danger. Amateurs in Croke park die sometimes when bludgeoned by a sliotar--yet you do not wear helmets. Old marriages stick not because of fear of losing comfort and convenience, but stalwart commitment. Mostly athiests--your young are sick of the pain of believing all the others are wrong. I never went to the town of Lusk. You seem satisfied with less. You don't have to be the smartest, fastest, strongest, most beautiful. Youth travel for a year after high school--mostly to South America. I wonder why. I daydream about you.

Should I move there? I am getting a degree in school counseling and you don't even have school counselors. Your weather just screams seasonal depression. Traveling back to the states often would be too expensive...I would give up authentic relationship with my family. I have never fancied myself an expatriate. I have a house here, a church. Still I am strangely pulled....