homesick
heart ache
heart is in decay

a sickness known to all
so who do i think i am
to wallow in my own pain
as if i am the first
to feel

well
i pray that i
am the
last

i don’t think i’ve ever been
more in love with a city
than i was with you.
it’s inexplicable.

the more i see
this spirit of community,
of togetherness
where i live now,
the more i miss my real home.

it might be another country,
but you took me in,
held me like your own.

one hundred
and sixty thousand people,
yet it was always one:
the date whose flatmate
played in my favourite band,
the pub where a singer walked in
and we had to act cool,
even with fifty strangers, once,
crammed into a living room.

you were secret codes
and piano bars,
ropes above the thames,
carnivals and day festivals.
meeting someone,
and keeping them forever.

it was never just work.
it was passageways, and talent
rising like ivy through stone,
having the world
at my fingertips
as though sitting on a throne
without having a clue.

but i still did
what i thought i should,
and found myself alive
in the whole of you.

a ring of embers—
with my heart
gently dancing around it.
my face is flushed,
damp with tears,
as if they’ve started
boiling in the mist.
i miss you—
but you know that
already.

in my mind,
i’m still running
through the churchyard,
over stone paths,
stepping on yellowed leaves
that gave up weeks ago.
inside me:
homesickness, awe,
anger, grief—
a hundred hands,
all pulling.

you’re a morsel of bread,
bird-snatched, half-left—
carried home in my satchel,
like a labourer
at the day’s end.
you are what you say you are.
and more.
a frame around my soul
i can’t keep building.

i cannot call you mine.
i have a homeland.
you gave the exile shelter—
but she, the other,
birthed me, shields me,
and one day
will cover me with earth.
i cannot betray her.

for what you made
and left behind,
i owe you still.
i’ll bury your legacy
like treasure
in the quietest parts.
it’s mine to guard.

and maybe one day,
when time has vanished,
i can return to you—
shed a tear for us
on a rainy evening,
wipe you clean
like an old photograph,
and place you gently
back into
a quiet corner
of the past.

Oh raven, won't you sing me a happy song?
why must they always go so wrong?
what has happened to your tongue?
oh raven, please sing me a happy song

I've got walls and a roof, but this house isn't home
any more than these empty streets that strangers roam
oh raven, you've always been my friend
so why can't we put this suffering to an end

oh raven, I'll sing you a jolly song
and just maybe you might sing along
perhaps then we'll both feel at home
without living the illusion of our Stockholm syndrome

For flowers could never bloom
under the shade of our unified gloom
so let us chant the happiest of words
for we don't deserve to feel any worse

oh raven, I know you love all that is shiny
so why don't we look for your misplaced heart of gold
even though you may believe it shrunk so tiny
don't forget you never let our friendship grow old

My heart aches for a comfort I once knew—
not a place, not a person,
but a breath of warmth, a vanished echo,
a feeling I cannot trace.

It lingers in the salt of a memory
dissolving on my tongue,
in the brittle edges of old polaroids
where time has smudged our names.

I gather museum tickets
like relics of a past life,
paper-thin proof that I
belonged somewhere once.

But going back is like stepping
into a house where all the furniture
has been rearranged—
familiar, yet wrong.

Homesick for a ghost, I wander.
Hoping, searching,
For a voice, a touch, a sign—
anything that will whisper:

"You have arrived. You are home."

The sky is gray,
And the clouds are low.
The winds are chilly,
And traffic is slow.
I'm still kicking,
But my heart beat, I no longer know.
I'm missing the sea,
I'm missing home.
I want to see,
The salty waves as I roam.
My love is buried in the sand,
Too bad.
Guess I'm leaving off this morning,
Feeling sad.