pieces of home

Monday, May 6, 2019























They always say in the stories that home can be a person.
I was fifteen when I finally understood what that meant.

April and May are months that feel like sunlight and smell like change.
Brushes my lips as I step out into the breeze, a taste as familiar to me as my own skin.
It makes its way down my throat and through my veins,
flowers blooming and the setting sun.

How can warmth be so cold?

It dances through,
whisking me, the unwilling participant, into its waltz.
Shifting seasons, shifting tides
In and out
In and out
One, two, three
One, two, three

I look change straight into its freckled face
mischievous elven eyes that sparkle like a child's.
A question hangs on my lips that I never know how to ask.

When Taylor Swift said that your eyes looked like coming home, I don't think that this is what she meant.
But it's where I am, and they do.
So many people, making up the jigsaw puzzle that I call home.
And as I drive into the fading light, I can see the pieces slowly moving apart
and I know that this next year will only bring more of the elven child called change
as home gets a little more spread out.

The left corner piece will be crossing an ocean
one from the right hand middle headed to the shore.
The pieces closest to my heart are still unknown
but I know they're going.

When people are home, I guess you become a nomad
as home is scattered to a thousand different places.
But maybe home is home
even if the puzzle isn't the one that you put together in your childhood
and couldn't bear to break apart and put back in the box.

I take the box now
emptier than it was
and set it on the top shelf of my closet with the notebooks and albums and scraps of old paper.
I can't close the closet door.
I leave it open
just a crack.

Waltzing has always made me dizzy
but I lace up my dancing shoes anyways.

Maybe it isn't so bad, being a nomad.
Scattered pieces are still pieces,
and now I'll find a piece wherever I go.
So I tuck one in the pocket
of my old ripped jeans
always ready to snap into place
with whichever piece I land on.

14 comments:

  1. "When people are home, I guess you become a nomad / as home is scattered to a thousand different places." <--- MY HEART!!!

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  2. Ah your writing is just so lovely and reads like spring. <3

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    1. Oh my goodness, thank you so much, Hannah. :')

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  3. Beautiful!!!
    I'm all goosebump-y and inspired now :D

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  4. This is beautiful <3 Wow. The line, "How can warmth be so cold?" and "When people are home, I guess you become a nomad." Just ... wow. You're an amazing poet!

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    1. Wow, thank you so much, Hannah! That means the world. <3

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  5. Grace Anne...wow. This is so beautiful, and so FULL of HEART. :') <3 thank you for sharing something this special with us

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    1. Ugh, thank you SO MUCH. :') love you love you love you.

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  6. I love this so much!!! Thank you for sharing it <3 I think it captures a little slice of adulthood's bittersweetness. I've definitely felt "home" spread recently. You're amazing!!!

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    1. It really is the most bittersweet thing, isn't it? Thank you for reading, Abi :')<3

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