Home-Bound to Nowhere Land

Home used to be a truth

interwoven with my being.

I used to feel I had a knowing,

when something would hit me

and I could call it by name, first name even, real friendly.

Home was a feeling, places, people, routines, the word

Home had a meaning, a calling, a pull,

a familiarity that I could turn to.

Home things were sweet things,

warm things that

enveloped me—

promises of good to come and safety.

Home was in those moments when I felt complete,

like night snow falls, pine infused rain and sodden mountain dirt,

crisp clean air that smelled like childhood,

and cool water that lapped

sweetly against my skin

Nothing felt more like Home than returning to

my lake,

and it filled me with a sense of

peace.

I know no such peace anymore.

Muddled messed up concept of Home,

things I miss

and things that hurt to want

and hurt to have

and hurt to not.

Memories cut deep,

sharp steel blades carving out a hole in my chest,

hands clawing at empty space where a heart used to beat.

Home is a forgotten place,

a long ago,

a distant thing,

untouchable.

People have felt like Home to me...

but I can’t go to them now,

can’t seek solace in them now,

can’t get relief in them now,

left only with unanswerable questions like

Was that really what happened?

Do they remember me?

or am I just a faded image of a face they used to see?

Does something light up in their brain when they hear my name

or does it simply…itch?

If the person that I used to be is gone and no one remembers me,

do I even exist?

Will I ever feel at home again?

Will I ever feel at home in my skin?

Does that even matter

when I don’t have a private place to

just

be

in?

I feel untethered,

floating in an ether of despair,

craving something to ground to,

sink my feet into

until I feel solid,

like when I’d shove my toes and fingers under the hot sand,

burrowing until I could feel my own pulse racing,

or when I’d let myself fall back

into powder snow banks and just…breathe.

Breathe.

How do you breathe?

It never feels like I get enough air.

Always on edge,

always ready for the next stroke of lightning to strike me,

never safe, never at ease,

steadily leaking

all the things that used to make me…

Me.

Lost and angry,

dragging my way forward

desperately through the nothingness.

But what if the nothingness

is all there is?

What if I never make it out of the darkness?

What if I burned down the home inside myself?

My mind is in ruins,

moments of laughter

locked behind closed doors,

homey memories banished to dark corners,

love and happiness and passion all loafing in a tattered living room.

haunted by shadows of what used to be,

no place anyone would want to call

Home.

But I’ve been without one for so long

can you blame me for my madness—

when to live without a home

without a place to come back to

or a feeling of belonging,

is maddening.

Home

less

lacking in the thing that reminds me what I'm made of,

trudging through a dark slurry of

my own soul.

Home bound,

to nowhere land,

wandering, and missing and longing and thinking

if I chase it long enough maybe Home

will come find

me.