The Forever Foreigner

Dalas Kruger

A perpetual tourist, bags forever packed,

passport forever full.

Never truly calling anywhere home.

I live between arrivals—

half in translation, half erased.

Each place a version of myself I almost become:

the coffee here is darker, the rain speaks slower,

names blur in the mouth,

and I forget which language I dream in.

Worlds keep folding and unfolding,

their borders breathing like lungs.

Maybe the world is my home,

maybe I have never been a citizen anywhere.

I know how to disappear in airports,

how to smile through plate glass,

how to make warmth from strangers’ weather.

I know how to go,

but not how to arrive,

I don’t know how to stay.

Somewhere, my childhood is still unpacking itself—

the smell of sea and sun and dust

trying to fit inside a carry-on.

I’ve learned to keep what doesn’t belong to me:

postcards, accents, the way light bends differently

in every city’s morning.

I am fluent in departure.

I am native to nowhere.

I am the forever foreigner.