It makes me happy to go home—
excited, even.
The anticipation of being surrounded by noise and light and love
swallows all else.

I dream about the yellow glow of the windows
that spill warmth onto the driveway.
The smell of fresh air, crisp and earthy.
The promise of family;
voices overlapping, laughter echoing,
draws me in,
gives me hope.

For the first few days
the yelling, the arguing,
it doesn’t bother me much.
It’s a symphony of chaos,
filling the silence I’ve grown used to,
keeping the cold at bay,
patching over the hole
that an empty apartment carves into my chest

I tell myself that it’s normal—
that life changes,
people change,
but they’re still family.
and even when it doesn’t feel like love,
it’s still a home.

Yet after a week,
the yelling sharpens,
the words sting,
The voices rise like waves in a storm,
crashing over me,
again
and again,
each one heavier than the last.

Like nails on a chalkboard
I flinch.
Tiptoeing over eggshells.
Skating on ice
that never seems to hold my weight.

The home I remember—
a place of bedtime stories and shared meals,
of sticky counters and warm embraces—
it all slips away.
The memories turn brittle,
shattering under the weight of what is now.

I curl in on myself
Becoming small.
The woman I’ve built myself up to be,
feels like a joke.
The battles I’ve fought,
the wars I’ve won,
crumble to dust.

The happiness I once felt
turns sour,
curdling into anger
toward the people I call family.

But it’s not fair.
They’re hurting too,
over the shared home we have all lost.
So my anger and pain,
none of it matters,
and it won’t fix what’s already been broken.

It becomes too much to bear,
the pain of what we’ve lost,
the anger at fate for destroying it,
It’s too loud—
too much for me to handle.
And all I want,
more than anything,
Is quiet.

So I drive,
5 hours and 13 minutes,
to my empty apartment.
Just to be met by dark windows,
empty and hollow,
staring back like vacant eyes.
A contrast to the warm, deceiving glow of my childhood home.

I walk inside
and revel in the silence.
No voices, no tension, no chaos.
Just peace,
soft and comforting.
Like slipping into cool sheets after a long day.
It’s heaven.
For a while.

After a week, though,
the silence and the peace
become suffocating,
The loneliness curls into every crevice of the apartment,
coiling around me like smoke,
sinking into my skin,
seeping into my bones and making them ache.

I feel like a ghost,
wandering a home that doesn’t belong to me.
Sleepwalking through the days,
going through motions that mean nothing.
The quiet isn’t peaceful anymore—
it’s consuming,
crushing the air in my lungs.

Eventually,
all i want
is to go home.

The simple act of looking
Will cause something to be
So I control my gaze
In a contemporary maze
Of love and poetry!

Splish Splash with Tired arms
Inhale Exhale with Tired breath
Yell and Argue with Tired coach
Whine and Complain with Tired swimmers
Loud Static from a Tired radio
Bubble and Pour from a Tired coffee ***

At the pool,
sound became music, and music
a Tired cane for them to rest their weary limbs

there are two types of sadness

there’s the kind of sadness
we ignore and
try to get rid of it
by finding new things to do
or we find someone to talk to
by blatantly avoiding any type of conversation
about feeling sad
about having any feelings at all
and then there’s that kind of sadness
that takes over
and it consumes any activity we do
we know it’s there
and there’s no possible way to avoid it
so we feed it exactly what it wants
it craves the sad music
it craves the isolation
it craves the anxiousness
and the sadness comes storming in
it has no manners
here we are calling sadness, an “it”
when all it is
is a feeling
that most people
call home

It’s only a necklace.
It shouldn’t mean much at all,
yet it holds everything I can never have,
it’s all I can do not to fall.

I’m gripping onto the shadows—
to the person he left behind.
Trying to remember his voice, his smile,
to make a picture inside my mind.

Is it strange to hate someone you never knew,
yet love them all the same?
I cannot tell if this is the truth,
or if my head is playing games.

The photographs of his kids and loving wife
make me wonder if he was ever there at all,
or if he was just a ghost of self-made fiction—
the unknown will become my downfall.

The truth is, he has so many others now.
A family to call home.
So why can’t I just let it go,
and go back to my own?

It’s just one silly gift.
It shouldn’t mean so much to me.
But without remembering who I was,
how do I know who I’m supposed to be?

We too would sit up throughout the warm nights
and laugh around the glowing campfire light,
then twinkling eyes meet from afar
sipping cocoa remembering good times
shared with friends.  We can never go back.

We took shelter from the shadows, from the dark.
When the sparks turned to fireflies, we’d smile,
and wish upon the flickering embers,
letting our dreams float up to the sky,

Speaking with love to them,
who had given me solace
and a safe harbor among friends.
How time did leave, how time did slip us by
to leave us with only faded memories?

I need to straighten
my dreams out,
they got crooked along the way.
In my frozen castle,
in this grueling winter of life,
lies in me an invincible summer
that longs to be free;
scabbed up knees and
grass stains on my soul,
it just itches to run, and
swim the rivers,
and lie long in the sun.