Hiraeth | Teen Ink

Hiraeth

February 12, 2024
By FlNCH PLATINUM, Scituate, Massachusetts
FlNCH PLATINUM, Scituate, Massachusetts
25 articles 8 photos 1 comment

Hiraeth

(n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot to return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.


How could you describe something that isn’t, something that never was, that never will be?

A feeling like your heart is being crushed inside of your body

Like it’s being torn into thousands of pieces

Like there’s a gaping hole in your soul

And it’s sucking you into yourself

In the late hours of the night i sometimes cry

Because my body doesn’t know how to deal with the loss of something i never had

How could you even begin to mourn the lack of nothing?

What are you supposed to grieve?

You can’t.

And so sometimes you just have to lay there and sob

muffling screams in pillows

Wiping snotty noses on old tissues

Curling in on yourself to protect you from something inside

Whimpering that you want to go home as you tremble in your bed

Wondering what your soul once had that is no longer

Why you’re reminded of things you never had in this life, why you long for them.

What could have left such a great impact on your atoms in a life before that the wistfulness has carried into this one

A feeling so strong, the glimpse of memory so meaningful that it wrenches screams from the innermost part of you, of who you are

The worst mixture of homesickness, sorrow, longing, and anxiety you could ever imagine multiplied by each year you’ve lived

It’s a feeling that makes you wish you could run away from yourself

Run away from the thing you never lost

Run away from feeling, from thinking.

It’s a feeling that makes you wish you could step out of the confines of your skin

The skin that suddenly feels claustrophobic

The skin at suddenly looks wrong on you

It’s a feeling called Hiraeth

And i can’t run away from it.



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.