Home

What is home?

A question everyone gets asked at least once in their lives

A more intricate question than one may believe

The definition of “home” is rather unambiguous

But it’s a loaded question

That can entail telling a convoluted story

For me, home does not contain 4 walls

It does not carry any complicated street number

& does not have a beating heart

Home is not singular,

not a moment,

not one thought

My home is the memories I have left of you

It’s the brief moments that I feel your presence with me again

The day’s I swear I see your silhouette on the wall

The nights I feel your touch, caressing me back to sleep

Home is the days I spend visiting the stone you’re buried under

The forbidden secrets about the afterlife you tell me when you stop by in my dreams

The star in the sky that you morph into to tell me bedtime stories -

where you borrowed Saturn’s ring to give me as a parting gift

Home is your favorite books I can no longer open that collect dust on the shelf

It’s our favorite songs that I dance alone to now

Your final words that play over and over in your mother’s mind

The whispers I hear in the dark so I don’t forget the vibration of your voice

The photos of us that live in the depths of my camera roll that I scroll to every night

Home is the snow that falls mirroring the night you left me

It’s the frozen tears that are scarred on my cheeks from that January night

It’s the forest fire in my chest that will live with me for a lifetime

Home is not a place

Home is not singular

Home is not a beating heart

But rather your life …. our life, flashing before my eyes

The memories you left me that swim laps in my mind

The possibilities, the “what if’s”

The unremitting six stages that restart when the seventh stage approaches

The empty promises of our future

The empty promise of your future

By: Natalie Winsor