This Post Contains Almost No Metaphors About Trees

I have been away from Minnesota for fifty-six days. This is the longest I've been out of state for three years.

I was trying to write this post earlier today, and I had this metaphor all worked out. It involved the apple tree outside my window, and how one side of it's all dead and evil-looking--like it just sprang off of a set for some horror movie--and how the other side has overcompensated for the dead side, producing apples upon apples and upon apples. So many apples that one of the branches is too heavy to support its weight and is about to snap clean off.

I had this metaphor figured out, and I had some spectacular insights about the tree. For instance, this is the same tree I stood under for my prom pictures. It was in spectacular bloom during prom weekend, so ex-Keith and I posed with the white apple blossoms. He was twenty one in those pictures. I was seventeen. He had already been to college and dropped out before I met him, and he looked mildly unamused about being forced to go to a high school prom. Pictures from later on that night show a happier Keith, though. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: those mashed potatoes at our prom buffet were magical.

So that's what the post was going to be about. A tree metaphor. A description of prom. A discussion of my ex-boyfriend, who had to be rushed to the hospital last week on account of a crippling panic attack--his first, and let's say it's because he realized he will never love anyone like he loved me back then, when I was a wide-eyed high school student who thought there was nothing better than driving the back roads of Boston, New York with my hand on his thigh.

But I decided that wasn't really what I wanted to talk about. Who cares about a tree?

What I really care about is this: today I booked a flight to Minnesota. Today I walked around feeling a little lighter because in a little over a month I'll be back in my old home, and I'll be sitting at a bonfire, and I'll be eating S'Mores, and I'll be thinking, Here's what I've missed.