Monday Required Reading. Good thing I dropped the "Morning" last week, eh? I'm barely making it into Monday, never mind the morning. Oy. A link to this set of shorts over on The Rumpus caught my eye on Twitter yesterday. Meditations on home are right up my alley right now, and some of these are really wonderful. There are some lines in these that I adore: "Home can be felt in fragments.," "Can't a gas station just be a gas station anymore?,"Clearly I should have been breeding these last years instead of reading books. Don Quixote will never impregnate me.," just to name a few. I think the one I have here, by Sam Lynn, is my favourite, but there are so many other wonderful ones. Take a gander. The great thing about shorts is you can spend a minute or two reading one. Perfect for a whole series of breaks in your day.

I would love to go home. 

The trouble is that home isn't a single place I can return to, because I have never felt complete. 

Home can be felt in fragments. 

Sometimes I feel at home in the kitchen of the red house I grew up in, when my mom is making coffee and talking to our dogs. 

Home can be found in the white curtains of my childhood bedroom. It's in the peach color of my walls, the walls that used to be white, with a border of pastel fairies along the top. 

I feel at home when I write or draw, and when the only light in the room comes from the Christmas tree. 

Home is a book. It's a red cardinal in a tree. It's a long ride in the backseat of a car, the white moon chasing us down the street. It's hearing from him, unexpectedly. 

I'm home when I'm crying on bathroom floors, and picking at my skin until it bleeds. 

Home is the Atlantic Ocean when the air is cold, and my legs and stomach go numb as I head further into the water. It's the drop down to my shoulders, the rush of ice as water hits my ears. The silence found in salt. 

It's the glow of a night light in the hallway. The sound of the television downstairs.
"It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" 

Maybe I'll find myself in someone's arms, and they will feel like home. That might happen for me. 

The thing is that we are each our own homes first, and we can't move out. 

I think my building is cluttered. The light is pretty in the morning, but there are dirty dishes in the sink, and loud voices at night. There is a leak in the roof. 

There may never be one place I can go where everything feels right -- where I will not want for anything. The idea of being able to go home feels like a carrot on a stick, dangling in front of a donkey's nose. 

Maybe if I keep moving and don't complain, if I read more books and love better, and patch the leaky roof, then one day I'll reach home, and my head will be clear. There will be a bed for me, with soft pillows, and I will sleep soundly. 

-- Sam Lynn 

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