Home

The cold hard slate of the station car park,

Rises up through my spine as I hunch over my phone,

Passing the time between arrival and departure.

As the wind makes me shiver I remind myself that I am almost, almost home

Wherever that is.

I don't really know.

A place to sleep in familiar sheets,

To hug someone I love,

To relax, to read, to drink sweet tea,

To watch tacky rom coms and call my mum.

A man tries to open the waiting room door.

It's locked.

He tries again.

Several times, more violent with each twist of the handle.

Does he really think I would be out here if it was open?

That I have chosen to sit in the slithering rain?

I meant for this to be a happy poem.

About travel and beauty and adventure.

About the places I've been,

the experiences I've had,

The journeys, the stories, the surprises,

Good and bad.

And there has been good.

So much good.

Underground caverns lit by old oil lamps,

Local wines sipped by silent lakes,

Winding bus routes through mountains and castles that remind me of ...

That remind me of home.

Home.

My childhood home,

My parents home?

Where I decorated my bedroom with fairies, flowers and princesses,

Then Harry Potter, the Hunger Games and Les Miserables

And finally photographs, ornaments and memories.

Layers of life traveled through within four consistent walls.

Four consistent walls which I left.

Which I chose to leave,

To study, to work, to travel,

To move from dorm to flat to house-share to hostel,

Never staying still for more than a week , a month, a year maybe but no longer,

Half a decade of refusing stability,

Resisting an internal, primal need for one consistent home.

The rail-replacement bus arrives and pulls me out of my rumination.

I climb on board in the same way I have boarded every bus before.

Up 2 small steps, out of the rain, into the aisle,

Breathing in recycled but somehow not yet stale air.

Sitting in a borrowed seat by a worn window,

Occupying a rented square of space as the engine carries me away.

Spotify sings me a comforting album I have heard hundreds of times before,

I semi consciously scroll through pictures of friends and family on my phone,

Laughing at memories and moments encapsulated by flashes of light and deliberate clicks.

Somehow, my body and mind chooses to relax in this alien familiar space.

I feel strangely comfortable,

Unexpectedly calm,

Almost like, within this time-frame of transit, I am

In some way,

Somehow,

Home.