Home

By Mian Anais

I learned young 

that not every door stays open, 

that sometimes rooms forget how to hold you.

I went looking for home 

in borrowed bedrooms, 

and the corners of houses that weren’t mine. 

I tried to find it in the small things

the sound of Saturday morning cartoons, 

the way a little sugar in your coffee 

could soften even the hardest mornings. 

These little pockets of warmth 

I mistook for home. 

But every time I thought I reached it,

it slipped 

ran from me, 

like it knew I wasn’t meant to find it there. 

So I pieced it together 

in the creases of poems, 

in the women who kissed my bruises into butterflies. 

I stitched together shelter 

From words and tenderness 

even when they only found me sometimes. 

Because home isn’t four walls 

or a welcome mat. 

It’s not a place you have to shrink to stay in. 

Home is who you choose 

when blood didn’t know how to love you right, 

when mommy forgot you were worth keeping.

I used to think home was

where the shouting started, 

where the door had no business being slammed 

but was always swinging from painted over hinges. 

A place where you found closed fists 

more than open arms, 

but you could always find praying hands. 

A place you learned to disappear in, 

where you tucked yourself 

into unswept corners. 

I used to think home was a word, 

or a prayer, 

you whispered into wishes behind closed doors 

But now I know 

home is not four walls, 

not my bloodline, 

not the echo of a slammed door. 

Home is a choice. 

It’s the body that lets you rest. 

It’s the arms that reach for you to stay.

I carry my home now 

in the folds of a love 

that I pray won’t slip away. 

To the child I was 

the one hiding in closets, 

pressing her palms together 

waiting for the world to soften 

I want you to know 

you were home all along. 

By Mian Anais