You and I don’t have a home. We build footsteps as we go along. We fight through sandstorms. We drink red wine and pass out on the porch. We fight in our sleep, in nightmares. We don’t have a home. We build as we go along, in the hopes that one day we may find home.
Mothers taught us to think, to find our way, to get lost in sandstorms and build homes. Fathers taught us to work hard, to keep building dreams. We fought with them. We fought with ourselves. We kept trying, but we never found home.
We are always running, you and I. We run from the cloud of undeniable guilt, we run from absolution. We are afraid of permanence. We like to dress ourselves in silly costumes and never wear the same thing twice.
Do you find home, ever?
I sing. I dance. I write. I fly in my head, sometimes in my dreams, and I never land because landing would mean permanence. I can’t land. I have to fly and I have to keep falling until I find home. Home is everywhere. Home is the little house on Cedar. Home is the brown blocked building Mom and Dad bought years ago and then sold. Home is senora’s casa on calle Hernani and the sunlight melting behind the balcony. Home is the building where the young kids throw parties and get drunk and do wild things.
I won’t search anymore. I am done searching. I will build as I go along. Don’t judge me. Don’t tell me I am wasting my life. No fight is a waste. No thought, no nostalgic remembrance is a waste. If I decide to get drunk and forget it all, let me. Don’t tell me home is here. Home is nowhere. I will never find it, and that is okay.
Let me run. Let me run. Let me fall. Let me fall.
I don’t ever want to hide or find home or cry on Mommy’s fragile shoulders because she’s fought too hard. This is my fight, not hers. This is my search, not hers. Home is a mush of memories, a puddle of past rainbows and unforgotten sand castles. Remember the sand castles we used to build. We were children. We thought everything was so pretty and so darn colorful. It still is. Every damn sight is pretty and colorful, but nothing is home. Don’t ask me if I am going home. I will build on, come and go, I will never be permanent. I will never be gone.
I will always be running with scissors, cutting up pieces and shredding diaries. And you will never catch me.