My plane touches down on the runway and

I can’t wait to disembark.

Because, her.

Lori is waiting for me at the bustling

Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, and

I can’t wait to press my face into the soft skin scent of her neck and

breathe in that men’s cologne she wears, the scent of coconuts and spice.

The doors of the baggage claim swing open and

I hoist my luggage off the conveyor belt and rush towards the exit

Striding out into the large open area of the arrivals gate

I search for her in the sea of waiting people

There she is craning her neck as she

searches for me in the crowd of passengers

I hurry down the ramp, weaving in and out and all around of

the people in front of me walkingso i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y

Please get out of my way! I plead silently in my head

Don’t you people know that the love of my life is waiting for me?

Don’t you know that, in grade eleven, I sat beside this woman in science class?

Don’t you know that she and I reunited 25 years later by accident—fate likely—at a gig I was playing in Guelph, Ontario?

All the while I’m trying to compose myself—

to hide the fact that I have been weeping for the last 20 minutes of the flight

as the plane descended over the patchwork Ontario landscape of my childhood

those checkerboard fields, hues of brown and green,

so familiar to my eyes, my body, my feet—

and the feel of the moist ground between my toes when I used to

kick off my shoes and walk along the dark furrowed rows of

freshly-tilled, spring soil on our farm

a life I left many years ago

a life that is now reviving itself

a life to which I am now returning but reincarnated into a body queer.

And suddenly, our eyes meet, and Lori recognizes me

She knows I’ve been crying, and she’s been crying too

and my heart tries to jump out of my chest.

And when the crowd in front of me finally disperses

And she stands before me, a homecoming, familiar and tender

I fall against her body into her quiet strength, overcome.

It all comes rushing in—

that everything in my life has led me

back to her, to this moment, to this continuation of our story

to this Ontario soil.

This coming home is something of the heart, the body, the spirit

This coming home to her

to these old farm fields

to myself again

to a land I left behind—

how it all falls together

how it all collects in the soft places

inside me.