Pieces of Home

Home is the old Steinberg piano, with the high D a little sharper than it ought to be. A little like me.

It's the road I used to know well, though there's a new billboard on it now; the promise of problems solved, for a price. The problems change, so does the price, but the earth beneath it does not.

It's the climbing rose that pricks and grabs as you pass; it only hurts sometimes, when I think of what's buried beneath, with a red plastic frisbee surely faded to orange fragments by now. But my heart is learning to smile about him.

Home is a familiar, lip-biting smile in a sea of strangers' faces. A flash of enamel reflecting strobing neon, cutting through the noise and colour in a way my thoughts could not.

It's a steadying touch on my arm, a murmured word in a darkened theatre that tells me I'm still here.

Home is the number that you call, when you're all alone on a cold street corner, collar pushed up against the rain.

Home is you.