My Darlington Experience: Five Years in a Poem

Five Years

Five years. 
Four rooms.
Three homes.
Rome has been made mine.
I know the river.
I know these roads.
I know these people.

My Darlington Experience
Is not a matter of
One subject,
Rather it is a blanket
Stitched together
By moments,
By memories.

Here I learned
Both things I will forget,
And things I will keep forever.
I have tasted my own tears.
I have heard my own laughter.
I have fallen;
I have been pushed down.

The people you see,
They planted seeds inside me-
Each helping me grow.
Sometimes I feel weak,
But I know my roots are strong.
All around are
Little pieces of sunshine.

This old place,
That sometimes feels like prison,
Is where I found my first love,
And my second.
Parts of me stay buried here,
I am not the same girl.
I am better.

Learning to say goodbye wasn’t easy.
Learning that saying goodbye wasn’t easy
Brought a heavy heartache.
Having the people you love most
Cry in a different time zone,
In a different country,
Brought an even heavier heartache.

I wish I could tell you
I will only remember
The beautiful, delicate things.
But the truth is,
What crushed my soul,
And broke my heart
Molded me to be beautifully broken.

Five years.
Four rooms.
Three homes.
When I walk across that stage
I will smile, and I will cry.
Leaving a part of yourself behind
Will never be easy.