poetinside

Home, for me, always signified that place where I was known, in some kind of a priori sense, a place that kept hidden those secret parts of me that could never be undone and were therefore intrinsic to who I would ever be. Some facets would change but ultimately the ‘real’ me would only ever be known by those few who come from that place, home, those few who understand those primordial chunks of me.

But I underestimated the shakiness of my foundations. And waves that once swallowed my anger as I screamed on the banks of the Atlantic until my throat was hoarse with salt have stopped listening. The sand still clings to my toes, determined to follow me across oceans, a constant reminder of all I leave behind. A struggle. And as new stories write themselves on the shore only to be washed away by rising tides, I learn to let go of the past.

Because the truth is the past is no greater a part of me than the present or the future and they don’t know me here at all. But then no one does. Because on every continent I’ve lived and loved, with every culture that has shaped my beliefs, there is always a different version of myself manifest. And there is no one who has been on this journey from the beginning, no one who can know all of me, from stubborn, rusty bolt to the thinnest thread.

So if home is the place where I am known, but no one really knows me, then does that mean I have no home? Or is it that I am the only person who can ever really know the grains of sand upon which the fragile castle of my being is built and destroyed every moment. Only I can know how they shift and slip through bony fingers and threaten to be washed away at any moment. And so, if only I can know, then I must be home.

I am home.