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No Place Like Home
Home
I had never really thought of home very deeply before
It had sometimes been a fleeting subject
What was it?
What did it mean to me?
I hadn’t thought about that very deeply before
Now I have
Home
It doesn’t matter the time or distance
Home haunts
It watches over your shoulder as you venture away
It keeps a close eye on your clock
Ticking
Then it strikes
It wraps it’s sneaky tendrils around your heart and squeezes until you can’t breathe
It eats you from the inside, tearing up everything
Home hurts
Any time you’re alone it takes and takes and takes
Until you have nothing left
But longing
Constantly on the edge of a dream
Warm air, familiar scents
Faint voices, hot food
Easy laughter, tender birdsong
Memories of a different time
Of liveliness
Of happiness
Of home
It takes your fear of change and twists it into a horrifying dark beast
It’s pulse thrums away at your dreams and thoughts
It feeds on your dark times and drinks from the tears in your eyes every night
It stifles every distraction like a tiny flame
If you aren’t thinking of it, it’s always there
Waiting
Stalking
Until it’s inside
Taking
Stealing
Feeding
The bitter tang it leaves on your tongue late every night
The needles it stabs into the backs of your eyes when you least expect it
A song
A story
A name
A voice
A laugh
Each pulls pieces of you away, bringing you home
Until you’re there
In every way but reality
Until you are no longer you
Until your life is no longer yours
Until the pain becomes normal
Until you’re a shell
Until you don’t know if your lungs can take another cry
Until you don’t know if your eyes will ever feel normal again
Until you don’t know if you will be able to force yourself out of bed the next morning
Until you don’t know anything at all
But home where the heart is
Home, bittersweet home
It’s just a place
A four letter word
So I hadn’t really thought about it that deeply before
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This was written during the height of my homesickness when I was abroad for a year. It was also accepted into my school’s annual literary journal.