If you asked me to define home, I'd picture her.

I wouldn't think about my leather couch, but her brown eyes that fill up the room more than any piece of old furniture ever could.

It is not the drapes I played Hide-N-Seek in as a child, because her hair is so much better to get lost in.

My home is not my first house that seemed like a labyrinth to my tiny fingertips, because her mind has far more hidden rooms to discover.

My house has chipped paint on the walls, but my home.. she is covered perfectly.

If you could substitute a photograph for a dictionary definition, it would be her silhouette beside the word "home."

But you see, the problem with home is that you never realize its importance until you can't have it anymore.

Her heartbeat no longer sounds like my mother making breakfast in the kitchen on a Sunday morning, it's the one creaky step I used to skip over because of its gut wrenching noise.

I can't stop thinking about her. I have nowhere to run to, because her arms aren't wide open anymore, they're closed and locked like my bedroom door. I'm homesick.