The House I Never Found

I was born beneath a roof of thunder,

Where silence rattled louder than the storms.

Walls remembered names I never learned,

And floors creaked with footsteps that weren't mine.

I carried home like a folded map,

Lines blurred from all the times I wept on it.

Every stop felt like an almost-place,

A maybe, a nearly, a not-quite-home.

I’ve tried to find my shelter in people—

Lovers who spoke in promises

Like keys jingling on a ring

That never fit my door.

I knocked on poems.

I bled in pages.

I unpacked my ache into metaphors,

But metaphors aren’t mattresses.

And poems don’t hold you at night.

The truth?

I’ve grown addicted to leaving—

The rush of goodbyes,

The sobering silence of new beginnings.

I call it freedom.

But maybe it’s fear, dressed as flight.

Still, I build.

I build with hands blistered by hope,

Stacking moments like bricks:

The stranger who smiled when I dropped my books.

The sun that warmed my back on a cold day.

The friend who stayed.

Maybe home isn’t a place.

Maybe it’s the moments you choose to keep.

The light you don’t let go of.

The love you dare to believe in

Even when it’s gone.

So I carry that now—

A home stitched from softness,

Tucked between heartbreak and healing.

And one day, maybe,

Someone will walk in without knocking

And recognize the walls I built

And say,

“I’ve been looking for this, too.”