Home,
Where the stove was warm, the winter cold; mother Russia.
The road with longevity and the way in, simpler,
Just by the walnut tree, a green wooden gate,
The size of a door and in need of a new coat of paint.
Babushka would be baking piroshki, we’d sit together and eat, and know that we are home.

Home,
Where the sun was unforgiving, the deluge thunderous. Holidays in Mombasa by the Indian Ocean. That wait to the end of the school term, long walks to the classroom, heavy bags, white socks don’t go well with dusty paths but the samosas in the tuck shop were worth the drudge. Mother and father fought often; their contrast created me. That house with the canna lilies, the symbol that you had arrived home.

Home,
Mother and father and babushka die. The walnut tree – barren, the canna lilies fade, how will I know I am home with no landmark to show me, that I am there. Looking, for the sign, the route to heaven, searching, to and fro, sun and snow, my body wanders, my spirit sighs with the fatigue of displacement. Where is home?

Home,
A place. A tree. A flower. A person. Both loved and unloved. Pieces of me scattered along the remnants of my journeys home, trips to nowhere. Brokenness, freed me, not confined to being whole. Make anything, something, out of the pieces I still hold. Make, remake, unmake until it’s unrecognizable. Take. Me. Home.

Silence.

No answers.

Fragments of shattered thoughts echoing my absence from home.

Home,
One day, I will find you again. I’ll say, here you are. I’ll give you a landmark. You will have direction, you will be reachable. Something will be growing, cooking, speaking in familiar tones. Yes, you will be … Familiar? I will swim the ocean, walk through Adygeyskaya Naberezhnaya, trail my path to father’s grave in Isebania, gather all the brokenness I left along the way. I will put them side by side where they fit. I will make you, I will find you again. A woman, my prerogative, I’ll birth you. Whatever it takes. I will bring you

home.