My Home
My home is a house that stares at the sea
Hugged by a jagged black and white coast
A clearing in the forest
Hidden under a blanket of mist
A city I love
A culture I will always be a stranger to
A fierce people, a soft land
A storytelling country
My home is my mothers voice
My fathers hands
My sisters sunshine
My brothers birdsong
My dogs sweet sigh
My home is through the doors which I am ushered by strangers
Different colors and shapes and sizes and smells
New, old, rediscovered faces that greet me on the other side
A network I string together across continents
Leaving traces of myself in small offerings
Never enough to encapsulate my gratitude
My home is a corner of this continent
A small mother with a big heart
The warmth of a family that is not my own
A love that laughs at language
My home is a boy who builds me a house in every city
Lost until I am lost with him
He guides me through tangled forest paths
Like the creases of his palm in which I walk
A love that unravels me like a map
A love that unravels the world
My home is a base
For those who pass through
A place to rest, to speak, to heal, to start new
To question and refind meaning
To relive memories and create new
A reminder of why we go these distances
My home is embraces
Touches that my body knows
In countries that it does not
Reunited
My home is the hearts I reside in
Scattered like stars around this rock
A love that burns incessantly
Even when hidden by the strength of the sun
My home is my past lives
The years I have spent
Struggling in foreign languages
Creating friendships that transcend our accents
Building lives by piecing together small things I find
Stitching together a patchwork of small joys
The thread my determination
My home is the lives that await me
The doors and countries and arms that have yet to embrace me
That I have yet to know
My home is in between the cushion of my headphones
The sounds of my former homes, my past lives preserved in musical form
The sounds of my pain, my love, my bliss
The sound of changing directions
My home is the uncertainty of what is to come
And the certainty of my ability to create a home out of whatever does
Knowing that the closest shelter is here
Within myself
My home is the possibility of starting new
Over
And over
And over again
