Coming Home

I have always wandered the cobbled streets of my mind, clucking inwardly at all the things that sadden me, skipping a step with joy at every wonder. Its a happy moment, a particularly confusing happiness, when I think of walking home through these streets.

I have spent a good few years away. Away as I feel from all things homey. My cats, my dog, the shelves stacked up lined with books I have grown with. My room, my room. My little sister calls it "my room" now. She looks intense as she bites into her nails, wondering if 'that' guy wonders about her as she does about him, worried about the small things that become mundane as you grow older. My front-room, my father, the atheist, sitting relaxed, barely watching as he flips through channels on the TV, worry lines creep across his face, retired from his humble-paying humble-job, thanking some divine source for all its humility, all of his life and of our's. My mother, smiling, cheerfully etching between love and love-lost, slowly dying inside as the cancer caresses her boisterous strings, of life. Of love. Of memories just like this one.

I have wandered 'these' streets. Always coming back. Always taking that last look at the disappearing faces, as my train pulls out of the station I call home. I always turn around and wonder if I really remember my lover's face, or is it the idea of him that keeps me wondering if its really him, when its really him. I remember the last touch, the last time I looked at those eyes and saw these memories stare back, surprised. The pupils dilate, and then they become mirrors. Mirrors I avoid. Mirrors we all avoid. We avoid to look at the realities we make such great sacrifices to keep away.

My home is my mirror. A place I want to go back to. To keep going back to. To keep wanting to return to. And so I must run. Run, not hide. I run away, so that I can come back someday. I run so that the memories remain. So that I can live off the romance. I always come back, I do. That's why its home.