Longing for Home

I want to go home.

I’ve been a few places (not many, but enough)

so I know my way around the world.

I know how to get from here

to there,

I know how to take buses and trains and taxis and which restaurants to go to for free Wi-Fi

when your data runs dry.

I want to go home.

Home is not a place, but a

Feeling.

It doesn’t matter how many miles

you’ve traversed or how many

passport pages you have stamped

or how many relatives show up to

Thanksgiving dinner and

cram their way

into your too-warm kitchen;

freedom

is an illusion.

I want to go home.

There are aches and pains

in your body

that are fixable.

There are aches and pains

in your soul

that can’t ever be found.

I want to go home.

What is longing, anyway?

Is it a feeling

a calling

a promise

or a past-life echo?

How can we feel so deeply

and yet deny ourselves so much?

I want to go home.

If desire is truth

then I am a saint

—for I have never craved anything more

than the feeling of belonging.

I want to go home.

Somewhere along the line

I lost a piece of me

and I will always be a little discontent,

a little unsettled,

until I find it again.

I want to go home.

***

I belong to the Universe,

and the Universe to me.

And I will continue traveling

to this place and the next

until that final puzzle piece

slips (at long last)

into place.

I am home.

*For all the dreamers out there who haven't quite found your place yet—you will.*