Is this Home?

What is home?

It’s not a house, we agree. Not a building or room or a particular nook. Those things are too empty without a person, without the emotions that we lay in every crack and feature and piece of art.

It’s people, right? The friends we linger on, sunbathed and haggard and everything in between. The mother who holds you while you cry, the father whose steady support makes it possible to face the world with your chin up. The brothers who teach you how to drink and cuss and grow your skin so thick one could call it callused. Society says this is home. Tells us again and again, with Hallmark movies and Netflix shows and Broadway musicals.

It’s a mental house, building,

breathing,

With every touching hand and tight embrace,

Every calm night sipping tea by our fireplace,

Warm and comfortable and safe

So… when we fall apart.

When I’m too bitter to tell you I’m sorry,

When you leave me, the memories of you becoming weaponized,

When Mom can no longer handle holding my heart,

When Dad can no longer help me hold my head up.

What is home then?

When it’s been ripped down brick by brick

Do we have a home anymore?

Do I have a home anymore?

Can I rebuild it when my hands are shredded and infected from trying to hold on?

Is my home my brother telling me he’d prefer you,

The weight of never being as good as those who are gone?

Is it in the small snippets of my memories, so vibrant they hurt?

Bright pink strawberry cake

And breakfast sandwiches on green grass

Late night debates, half asleep with a boy who reminds me of you so much I either stare or can’t look?

This reality is new and painful and raw

In ways I never thought reality could be

The wind rips me away in chunks,

The cold too bitter,

The heat too harsh.

The vibrations of my feet hitting the cobblestones

Are begging the question;

Is this home?

Is it really?