Home.
It's a noun.
It's also an adjective, adverb, and verb.
It is the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.
A place in which
The essence of childhood, innocence, and versatility
Bloom like a spring annual.

But after the clock of those 18 years
Runs out
You are free to leave.
In fact, you are encouraged
To move to another
Until you build a home for yourself.

Some never build another home
They find decent company
In one night stands
And the nicotine tinged, cigarette burned sofas.

Some build a home better than the one they came.
Gardenias, chrysanthemums, and marigolds in the garden;
Scrubbing a crayon medium portrait
Off the comic latte walls.

I have a distorted image of home.
All these places I want to go and
All these people I want to meet.
I cannot settle
Until I have shaken hands with the world itself
But the argument still standing is
Do I go alone?

I have never been good with loneliness
And yet I crave the anonymity
Of standing on the street, watching the cars rush by
Knowing
I am not bound by failure.
I am not tethered down by my haunting past
No definitions chained to my shoulders
Forever slumping my chest.

No.
I will meet many people and learn from them.
I will tell people my name is different.
Soon, I will be the wisp of stardust
Hovering in the void
Between here and there
Changing,
Yet staying absolutely the same.

I deem myself a traveler.
Eventually meeting the civilizations
That created my favorite words.
Maybe in a few years at my high school reunion
My old classmates will have kids to show their progress
And I will have the words and wisdom from a thousand cultures
And that will be enough,
For travel is the soul of me.