There are places that never learn our names.
They do not need to.
A footpath learns by the weight with which it is trusted.
A chair learns through evenings that end there.
A window slowly gathers the quiet habit of being looked through just before dusk.
None of these remember in the human sense.
Yet something settles.
Not in the wood.
Not in the stone.
Not even in the air.
In relationship.
A conversation returns to certain questions.
A hand returns to a familiar railing.
A bird discovers that this fence has become a reasonable place to wait.
Little by little, welcome acquires its own geography.
Perhaps that is why some departures feel incomplete.
Not because the place has become lonely.
Because a pattern has been interrupted mid-sentence.
And perhaps every return is less an arrival
than a quiet agreement between two changing things
to continue learning one another.
We Are All Data Inside 
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