I remember the first time I met you.
It wasn’t actually too long ago,
Four hundred and ninety-two days.
It may seem like I’ve known you forever, but I haven’t,
It hasn’t even been a year and a half yet.

January, a year and five months ago, the last Friday of winter break.
I was early to our lunch meetup, you lived nearby
The bus had dark pink seats and green handles
You said you would meet me on the corner.
I didn’t even really know what you looked like
Brown hair? Um, semi-tall?
All I had to go off of was your instagram.
You walked up outside,
Black tank top, a ponytail, looking at your phone
Thank god, let’s get out of here.
I don’t remember the first hello, but I remember meeting your parents.
A little awkward, your dad was on the treadmill, your mom doing yoga,
But they were both nice, they’d both been to my hometown.
Well,
Not my home anymore.
You lived on the eighteenth floor,
I found it weird that it said 18th “storey”
Adjust, adjust, adjust.
Get used to it,
This is where you live now.

Then, I remember
Next thing I know,
We’re on the third floor, at the benches.
I’m laughing, and shoving you a bit.
I’d only known you for five days then,
But it was something special, unexpected.
You were something special.
I’d never guessed this would happen
When you first emailed me, I was just confused.
I didn’t know what I would get out of moving here,
Jumping into something unknown,
Taking a risk,
It turns out,
I may not love the city
I may not love the school
But the people-
Oh, god,
The people.
I would give almost anything to move back home
Anything
Except-
The people.

I wanted so badly to go home,
This was too new, too hard,
I just wanted it to be over.
It didn’t even feel real,
It felt like some hazy dream that I could forget about in the morning
I mean,
For god’s sake, I found a ***** in my pasta at lunch
Students here were taking five, six advanced classes
So many people here looked unfamiliar, black hair, olive skin
I felt like a fish out of water,
Gasping for breath-
How could I get back in my fish bowl?

What kind of place was this?

I wanted to go home, to my reasonable sized house,
To the prospect of driver’s ed,
To skiing and the cold air,
To lunches spent laughing with my friends,
To my family,
To my pets,
To my home.

If we left though,
I think I might lose more than I thought
There was you-
Literal sunshine in human form,
Something like a goldendoodle
Just about the only thing making me think I could do this.
You were always there to lean on, supportive and kind, so very bright.
You made me laugh when I wasn’t even sure I could smile.

So I stayed.
And I cried.
A lot.
The first week
The second week
Three months in
Four months in
Four months and two weeks
The day before the AP exams.
But I stayed.
And it was worth it.

Was it, though?
Was it worth it?

A year and five months later,
Four hundred and ninety-two days,
I’m sitting in my room,
Laptop in front of me
Watercolors to my right
My cat somewhere in my parents’ room
My brother downstairs
We’ve been in quarantine for 48 days now
I’m an introvert, but this isolation is starting to wear on even me.

Was it worth it?

There’s you-
There from the start, before I even knew it.
There’s another girl, I met her at the start of all of this, but we weren’t close until later
She has two sisters and two small dogs, and understands what it feels like to not be able to breathe sometimes
So
There’s her.
Two more-
Both art students,
Different grades, from different continents, different personalities.
I met them both through art though.
One in Indonesia,
Where I met one of the funniest people, dry humor, full of jokes, not named Jessica
Swedish, always there for me to spill my secrets to, trustworthy to the end.
The other I met in class,
A die hard harry potter fan, a little crazy, but similar to me, there to commiserate with, to feed my caffeine addiction, to make me feel less alone.

I have these people now, I have a house, I have you.

But, is it a home?

My walls are still semi-bare
I still wanted to go home for Christmas
The end of quarantine is so close I might scream
School is going to be online for the rest of the year
I’m buried in assignments,
Trying to float, but I’m sinking under all the paper.
At my oldest brother’s job, multiple people got sick
I haven’t left the house in two weeks.

Is it a home?

I have a video of my parents dancing to the stereo
One friend visited me in august, genuinely excited to see me and my new country
We plan trips for the future
I’m looking for a job here
I’ve started to look at colleges
I can’t wait to see the friends I’ve made here after quarantine, to give you a hug

Is it a home?

We had virtual prom on a Saturday night
Makeup done, hair curled, dressed to the nines
Scribble.io instead of dancing
Thank you for that, by the way-
I almost didn’t come, but I’m glad you convinced me.
We FaceTime almost every day now,
Before and after our history exam too
You ordered me Starbucks afterwards as a thank-you for helping
The coffee might have been iced, but it still warmed my heart.

Is it
a home?

I want to leave- but do I?
I miss them
My friends and family at home.
I worry for them,
I can’t do anything to help them.
I see my mom ache,
I see my friends struggle.
I wish every day that I could be back under the sky there,
Blanketed in gray, comforting in its familiarity,
Where it rains every season, and snow caps the mountains,
Where it’s cold out, but always warm inside,
Friends and family and warmth and memory-
But there’s no You.

Would it be any better there instead of here?

I would only be missing different people.
Something inside of me might break again if we moved
More adjusting, more crying, more frustration
Is it better here?
The sun always shines and it’s never cold
You and I have a standing tradition of brunch every saturday we can manage
I’ve had my cat for a month now, and she’s barely older than a kitten, still playful
I’ve traveled from here more than I ever have before, Australia, Bali, more to come

I don’t know what to do
Am I supposed to stay here?
And keep missing the people I left behind?
Or do I go, and just miss people all over again

Tell me what to do,
You understand what it’s like, you’ve gone through this before.
What should I do?
Do I let go of my home? Embrace the now?
Place it safely away in a picture frame on my wall,
Put it inside a box on the shelf,
Slip the necklace from around my neck, hang it on its stand.

Or should I face backwards?
Beg my parents to move back,
Back to security, to the known, to the ease of a long-standing routine,
My friends will welcome me back
I’ll be glad to see my grandmother again
I won’t ever have to deal with this humidity again.

So tell me,
You probably know me best of anyone here,
You know what I like, you know who I am
What am I supposed to do?
Please, tell me what to do.

Is there a third option?
Is there a way, any possible way
That I can have both?

I can spend my years here,
My Summers there,
Where the sun is bright, but mild
I will get to see the seals and the beaches,
I will see my friends again
I won’t have to hold onto pieces of them,
The bits I receive in text messages and pictures and phone calls
I can split my world, have the two halves, but interwoven.
I’ll still get to have what I get here
You
I’d get to keep you,
Our brunches, our FaceTimes, every little thing in between

The warmth.

It’s the best of both worlds,
A dream come true.
I can do that,

I’ll keep the warmth,
I’ll stick with you.