Hello Poetry
Submit your work and get some sparkles! Create free account
Tags
#wherewebelong
Home was never just a place, it was the way the air held you, thick with spices, old wood, laundry soap clinging to late afternoons, and something unnamed that only existed there. It lived in the corners, in laughter that didn’t need finishing, in friends who entered without knocking, in the quiet understanding of being known without speaking. You carried it with you when you left, folded between shirts, hidden in the lining of memory, a scent you’d catch in strangers’ kitchens that almost—almost—felt right. Years stretched. Cities changed their faces around you. You learned new streets, new silences, new ways to be alone. ::but home:: Home stayed suspended somewhere behind you, untouched, unmoving, exactly as you left it. ::until you returned:: And there it was, the same creak in the floorboards, the same light slanting through the window, the same familiar smell rising to meet you like an old song. For a moment, everything aligned, past and present collapsing into a single breath. But then, something slipped. The laughter echoed differently. The rooms felt smaller, or maybe you had grown around them. Friends smiled the same, but their lives had learned to continue without you. Even the scent, that sacred, impossible scent, was softer now, as if time had thinned it or you had forgotten how to breathe it in. You walked through it all like both a stranger and a ghost, recognizing everything, belonging nowhere. Home had waited -- but it had also lived. And so had you. And somewhere between what remained and what had changed, you realized -- home is not something you return to. It’s something you outgrow, you carry, you lose, and search for again and again in places that will never quite smell the same. ::home::
0
Mar 28
Mar 28, 2026 at 1:28 PM UTC
Brwyne
::home::
Home was never just a place, it was the way the air held you, thick with spices, old wood, laundry soap clinging to late afternoons, and something unnamed that only existed there. It lived in the corners, in laughter that didn’t need finishing, in friends who entered without knocking, in the quiet understanding of being known without speaking. You carried it with you when you left, folded between shirts, hidden in the lining of memory, a scent you’d catch in strangers’ kitchens that almost—almost—felt right. Years stretched. Cities changed their faces around you. You learned new streets, new silences, new ways to be alone. ::but home:: Home stayed suspended somewhere behind you, untouched, unmoving, exactly as you left it. ::until you returned:: And there it was, the same creak in the floorboards, the same light slanting through the window, the same familiar smell rising to meet you like an old song. For a moment, everything aligned, past and present collapsing into a single breath. But then, something slipped. The laughter echoed differently. The rooms felt smaller, or maybe you had grown around them. Friends smiled the same, but their lives had learned to continue without you. Even the scent, that sacred, impossible scent, was softer now, as if time had thinned it or you had forgotten how to breathe it in. You walked through it all like both a stranger and a ghost, recognizing everything, belonging nowhere. Home had waited -- but it had also lived. And so had you. And somewhere between what remained and what had changed, you realized -- home is not something you return to. It’s something you outgrow, you carry, you lose, and search for again and again in places that will never quite smell the same. ::home::
Continue reading...
66