Writers 
Home was never just a door, a street, a familiar key,
it was the hush of my mother's voice calling me in from play,
it was laughter spilling loud around a table meant for three,
it was safety wrapped in ordinary, unremarkable days.
I've learned since then that home can shift and wander,
that it isn't always brick, or roof, or fixed address,
sometimes it's a hand I hold, a moment I grow fonder,
sometimes it's the silence where I finally feel at rest.
I found a piece of home in a stranger's gentle kindness,
in a song that somehow knew the words I couldn't say,
in the quiet after storms, in the calm after blindness,
in the friend who stayed when everyone else walked away.
I found a piece of home in learning how to hold myself,
in choosing peace over the noise I used to entertain,
in placing my own heart back up on its rightful shelf,
in loving who I am despite the years of quiet pain.
Home is not a location I am forever chasing,
it is not a moment frozen still in yesterday,
it is a feeling I keep building, slowly, without erasing
every version of myself along the way.
So wherever I stand — in strange rooms, in familiar faces,
in cities I don't know, in memories that remain,
I carry home within me, through unfamiliar places,
for home was never a house — it was love, learning to stay.