Ripple by Elisabeth Moss

I heard that we bring a part of where we’re from 

to every place we go, 

that our starting point was never stationary 

but shapes our every movement. 

Like a ripple in the water, 

everything that follows has echoes of its origin. 

The midwestern breeze still lingers in my exhales; 

my mother’s mannerisms rest on my cocked hip. 

Every hand that I shake meets the sternness 

that my father spoke into me, 

and every city I inhabit is seen 

through the fog of that hometown skyline. 

Memories are fractured to fit in a suitcase, 

and fragments of past live on in our pockets, but 

maybe our hearts were meant to be in motion 

to remind us of where they began.