Pining.
Wondering: where is home? What is home?
Home is where you are safe. Home is the warm place.
Home is where you do not feel afraid.
(Maybe home can be anywhere?)
Maybe home is the feeling of your baby falling asleep heavy in your arms,
or the feeling implanted into your consciousness
when you hiccuped in your mother’s womb, and she laughed
and then started talking to you, words a rumble of unintelligible love filtered through amniotic fluid.
The world is an overwhelming place. Bad things happen. Evil things.
(Maybe home is nowhere? There are many without a home. Maybe there is no home?)
No. Home exists. I’ve felt it.
Home is where love happens, any place you can unclench your jaw, relax, be unguarded.
Home is a friend cooking beans, home is a cup of lemon tea, a hug.
A place to seek hope, a place to dream, a place to find courage, a place to build strength.
Home is the rustle of wind in the drying, dying leaves during a silent walk.
Home is in the wide-open smile of the guy at the car wash
and the have-a-good-one from the tired cashier at Kroger.
Home is the smell of sweet potatoes roasting in a hot oven.
Home is having an oven, and a sweet potato, and a knife.
(Maybe home is a story we tell ourselves, so we don’t give up?)
Because the world is an overwhelming place, and bad things happen.
Every single day, somewhere. Bad.
Every single minute. Evil.
Things beyond fixing.
Things you cannot fix.
Things you have to try to help fix, anyway. Somehow.
(In the right sort of home, courage is born, change is born, hope is born?)
I want to find a home like that. Make one. Somehow.
Maybe home comes and goes, waxes and wanes
like the sliver of moon shining over the parking lot
brighter than anything else in the vast sky above?
Loading groceries into my car, I suddenly remember how it felt to be pregnant.
I was a home, then, walking.
We all begin in such a home.
Maybe home is where hope hiccups, somewhere deep within,
waiting for us to laugh again?
eeo 
Home is a memory of new friends sealing the deal with a heartfelt and vulnerable exchange of personal information. Then feeling validated in the process. Then reconnecting many years later to find that the seed is still there. Love your writing, Elaine! ❤
This is beautiful Elaine!
Having been abroad, moving regularly, I felt early on in my adult life that home is where the heart is, where your family is. Home is where you feel secure and confident.
Yet, looking back… I realise that most of the places I called home weren’t one by my own definition. I didn’t feel secure in the houses I shared with my ex. I didn’t feel secure in the houses I shared with my parents.
I didn’t feel loved or accepted.
Now… I’m hoping that I manage to build my home. The one in which I feel safe, worthy, happy. I know that happiness has to come from within, and I’ve taken many steps to get there. But I haven’t quite yet found my home.
XO