is home the dividing line
and fence that separates us from others
is it the walls that held our tears and our joy,
our traditions and pictures
is that where home lies?
is home the stories you’re afraid to tell
where you could shut the door and live in your imagination
where you knew what it meant to make people proud,
or to let them down,
is home expectation?
is home in the mountain streams,
in the trees who were the only ones who
could truly hear our problems and dreams.
is home what we loved?
because now I don’t know what home is
and I can’t look for it,
in old definitions of what home was,
because maybe it never was those things,
and maybe instead:
it was a feeling,
however small and however subtle,
however rare it occurred,
maybe that was home,
and it was different for us all.
I keep looking to find home,
in the past.
in old memories,
that are now sepia toned,
in these past glimpses of happiness
and sadness,
and learning,
joy and mistakes.
I look for home here.
I look for home in the old gifts,
and boxes of photos that show me I used to be happy,
and I used to be content,
I look for home here
and don’t find it.
I find perhaps some flavor of grief,
for everything that’s changed.
and it hurts to remember sometimes,
but maybe that hurting means it actually mattered to us,
and we must force ourselves to bear the pain of lost homes and lost loves
the uncertainty of this journey of defining what home is,
or even experiencing it again,
because you get used to being uprooted,
and you get used to never feeling comfortable
to never feeling home,
even if you have a home.
even if you have a family,
even if you have nothing.
maybe home is nothing but a fleeting feeling,
and maybe it's in the past,
and maybe it's in the future,
and maybe it’s right now.
inside you,
it’s in a book that makes you gasp,
it’s in a photo of your first love,
it’s in a ring your dad gave you before he passed,
and maybe it’s in a song that transports you back to a flavorful moment you wish to get lost in again.
maybe it’s about taking all those things,
and carrying them with us,
so we can remember what home was
and what things actually mattered,
so when we stumble upon that moment again we won’t miss it,
because we brought along our bag of clues.