I left the house that day without ceremony, without fanfare.
I didn’t spare a backward glance at its dog-eared shingles.
It was all I ever knew of shelter,
all I ever knew of protection.
It was always there for me, and I thought little of it.
Always open, always waiting.
I entered it for the first time
with only a few hundred breaths in my lungs.
Later, I screamed within its walls for freedom,
as though it hung like a millstone around my neck.
I grew into that freedom —
venturing farther and farther afield with each passing year,
until it no longer felt like home,
and I felt like a stranger there.
My memories blurred,
like the view through wavy, ancient glass
that still framed each windowpane.
My memory — like that imperfect glass —
distorted everything I saw.
I never looked back that day.
Not with my eyes.
But age has a way of urging us
to make sense of the journey.
And now, when I look back,
I know —
it was where I began.