Our whole life is a search party for home,
even if someone still greets us with open arms,
even if someone broke our spirit there,
even if it was gutted and now it’s a parking lot.
Home is the place where the curtains billow,
where the cat needs more milk
but she keeps crying for something else,
and the dog you never had licks you awake.
After years of leaving home
your heart becomes brick and mortar.
Your fingers are keys,
your feet concrete, hard to lift.
Your body becomes the whole foundation
as you settle deeply into the only home
you knew, the one where the hump back whale
sings its way across the miles.
It’s a place that lives at the water’s edge,
In the middle of the prairie,
hugged in between other homes
on a busy city street.
In the end home is the lullaby and the prayer,
the blackberry bush that scraped your arms,
the broken porch light
the bent screen door, the soft summer breeze.
Home hands you coffee and kisses your neck
calls you crying as you say - I am afraid of leaving.
You leave anyway, then run like lightning
toward your own search party for home.
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