The House We Left Behind

There is a house

that still lives inside me

though I no longer know

who sleeps there now.

Its walls were never painted evenly.

Rain stained the corners of the ceiling.

The kitchen window refused to close completely,

and every December

dust settled softly over everything

like a second skin.

Still, it was ours.

The mornings began with metal pots singing,

neighbors calling across fences,

the smell of onions frying in palm oil,

and radios speaking louder than necessary

about politics nobody trusted.

Children ran barefoot through the yard

until sunset swallowed their names.

Back then,

the world felt smaller.

Not safer,

or easier -

just smaller enough

to believe we could hold onto it forever.

But leaving happens strangely.

At first,

it sounds temporary.

A suitcase near the door.

Promises to return next year.

Phone calls home spoken with excitement

instead of homesickness.

Then suddenly

your life begins happening elsewhere.

In another language.

Another winter.

Another version of yourself

built from adaptation.

And one day,

you realize the old house exists now

mostly through memory.

The mango tree was cut down years ago.

The woman next door died quietly one Harmattan morning.

Children who once chased tires through the street

now carry briefcases and tired eyes.

Even the road looks unfamiliar in photographs.

Time did not destroy the place all at once.

It simply kept moving

until the house could no longer keep up.

Sometimes I dream about it still.

I dream of standing barefoot in the hallway

while evening prayers drift through open windows.

I dream of laughter rising from the courtyard

like smoke toward the darkening sky.

And for a moment,

everyone is alive again.

Everyone is still there.

Then morning arrives.

Japan outside my window.

Traffic humming below.

Cold light against unfamiliar buildings.

And the grief returns quietly,

not for the house itself,

but for the life that existed inside it.

Truly, some homes are never lost physically.

They disappear

the moment you can no longer return to them

as the person you once were.