Poems of Pain and Solitude

Chapter 5: welcome home

How do I become something you remember?

How do I become someone that you can point to and say

"She was my history, she was my future".

How do I become a part of you that you can never let go of?

How do I not freeze in your past?

It's a rainy Tuesday afternoon in a city that seems like a labyrinth.

The sky is jolting with lightning bolts that flash across it,

Painting cracks into a grey void, peering into another world.

I want to run away from the road, because I'm so lost,

I want to find something real, something other than a blurry mirage.

I run, I run, I run to the house. The door opens with a thrash,

But when I look around, looking for an anchor in a storming sea,

There's nothing to hold on to. There's nothing that I know.

The vacant walls stare back at me, 

The wind is howling in a voice I don't know.

I need to run away from here. Where am I?

I'm a lost voyager, in a sinking ship, looking for an island.

I'm a lost vagrant, looking for an asylum.

I'm everything that you're not.

I am lost, but I am found.

I call you up, because I don't know where I am, nor where to go.

You ask me what's wrong and I want to answer everything,

But I can't because that would be too much vulnerability to show,

And I of all know how much weakness must be kept a forbidden secret.

But I answer "I don't know" when I know.

"Do you want me to come over?"

Your voice is like a flood altering my dry landscapes.

But no, darling, never come here,

This place is haunted by the look in my eyes,

This place is haunted by my cursed aura, where all my ghosts stay.

I need to run.

I run across the streets I should know by heart.

I run across the deserted alleyways.

I run until the rain soaks through my clothes,

I run until the rain seeps through my skin, through the cracks.

I knock on your door. Silence.

But you answer!

And you fling the door open,

And all I can see is your pair of eyes

That shimmer like a pair of midnight moons.

I want to throw myself in your arms because I've found something.

I've found something real!

But instead you pull me in and I want to stay like this,

I want time to stick to a clock, I want everything to stop.

And I breathe in. And I breathe out. And I breathe in.

"Welcome home, my lullaby."

And this embrace that wraps around me,

Like a warm blanket on a winter night,

This, I realise, is what home feels like.

Safe.

You make some coffee, and we sit on the couch.

You're stroking my hair as if there's nothing else that matters,

We watch a movie and I put on your favourite knit sweater.

We're laughing our way out of the world,

And for the first time, the mist clears away.

I can see a path again.

It's cobblestone.

It's dangerous.

But I can see something.

And it's real.

There's something about the way you unlock a gate

To a different world.

It's as if there's sunlight falling in like golden strings,

And we both fade away to something that's not real at all, ethereal,

But when we return it couldn't ever be more real.

"This is as real as home gets."