Returning after a school trip,
you're excited to be home again.
Can't wait to walk up the path,
glad to see the familiar terrain.

You open the front door and
take a deep breath through your nose,
expecting to smell the familiar scent
of that which you hold so close.

You stop dead in your tracks,
so very short no one notices it,
it's something you never expected
and something you'd never admit.

Something in the air changed,
the air that fills this place.
You used to regard it as home,
yet now it feels like outer space.

The thought keeps returning,
it doesn't smell like home...
and then you ask yourself,
oh, where has the time gone?
~