Return to Palatino

How do I burrow myself back

into the straight 90s-denim Gap jeans 

or fit my high-arched feet into those stiff, generic Doc Martens?

Will reformatting the avalanche of documents

buried deep in my Google Drive

into the Palatino font

bring me back, back to the place

I was constantly running from?

A place of taught skin, wider eyes,

and street-smart naivete? 

Was my preferred font size ten? Eight? 

Today, higher above the sidewalk,

than when I slugged my flowered denim backpack over my right shoulder,

pounding the pavement in my cheap Vans on my way to the library, to work. 

I’m the one inside the house, with the cycling air conditioner, 

creating dinner conversation that flit out the bungalow windows. 

I’m the one I was always so curious about,

those painful years of my shambled childhood 

through my evening walks in my twenties, peering into Real Homes;

so I re-claw back my typographic artifacts 

to recall she’s here, in me, residing as mom, wife, and self.