Home is
grey. Grey like the hair of my grandmother who never remembers me. Grey like the gravestone of her husband. Grey like the storm clouds when mom and I watch the rain through the window. My sister told me a story about a princess with long, long hair who looks out a window from a tower. I wonder if she liked to watch the rain too. The rain sounds like one, long, continuous sigh. The cold seeps through the windows, into our skin.
Mom forgot to pay the power bill again. I don’t know what a power bill is. My older sister says that five years old is too young to know about power bills. Mom and I are in the living room. We have made a fortress using every blanket in the house — a mismatched mosaic wrapped tight around our skin like a snake and its snack.
“You know what happens after it rains?” Mom asks me. She runs her fingers through my hair. Her nails are long and I wonder what is the difference between nails and claws.
I think about it for a moment. “More rain?”
“No, princess,” Mom insists. “After the rain, there’s a rainbow. And do you know what there is at the end of a rainbow?”
“More rainbows?” I ask.
“A pot of gold,” she muses, wistfully. “A pot of gold with-”
“Ouch! I exclaim abruptly, as she tugs a little bit too hard at my hair. As if it were gold itself, as if it were long, long hair, as if I was a little princess looking out a window.
Mom’s hands flinch away. “Sorry, baby.”
I never find out what comes with a pot of gold.
*
Home is
black. Black like the ink I write my stories with. Black like shadows, both within and around me. Black like the night I walk underneath by myself, the nights I remember too starkly. I am 17 and the air still tastes like the beer I chugged before the frat party. My exposed skin shines like the moon I cannot see and I see a little bit of glitter tangled in the leg hair I missed while shaving. I am cold, but not from outside. There is a cold within.
I do not see him. We are all shadows shifting between each other. I hear his voice, slicing through the air like a war cry.
“What’s your name, pretty lady?”
My heartbeat sounds like rain, but also not like rain. It sounds like screaming, but it’s not me. It’s all around me.
His shadow shifts closer to me, each syllable shooting out of his mouth like a bullet. “My name is. My name is. My name is.”
I do not hear his name. Or maybe I do. Maybe it is Paul or William or the name of your brother or professor or soccer coach. Maybe I know him, but maybe you do, too. His shadow seeps closer to mine, and I feel the cold quake in my chest.
“What’s your name?”
My heels grind against the cement as I sprint in the opposite direction. They smack on the road like drums, spelling out a war song with a beat I wish I did not know. I want to sing it, but my tongue feels heavy in my mouth. I can’t move it. I imagine it, stiff and unmoving, slowing rotting between my teeth. A black slug decomposing beneath my smile.
Home is
black like the rot within all of us. Home is my body. Home is the body that serves both as my cage and my freedom. Home is my skin. It is my blood. It is every uneven hair and faded acne scar and chewed nail and mole. Home is the stardust stirring in my cells.
*
Home is
white. White like uneven smudges of sunscreen behind Dad’s ears. White like vanilla ice cream. White like the first snowfall of the year. White like the moon on the night you tell me you love me. We climb onto the roof of a local grocery store. We are 19 and drunk off beer and this fleeting notion that we can never die. I cannot see the stars, but somehow I just know that they are watching this — how could they not? How could the stars not want to watch you?
“I love you,” you say, quietly, the stale odour of beer rolling off your breath.
I want to say, “I love you, too.” I want to smile. I want to kiss you. I want to see a future and march toward it, unafraid. But the truth is I am 19 and I am drunk and I am scared of dying. My future can end at any moment, and I am not ready for it to end now. The truth is I know you are scared, too.
Home is white like the moon on the night you tell me you love me. Home is white like the moon on a lonely night.
*
Mom never told me what you find with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but maybe it is a home.
Maybe, home is
red. Cherry medicine my sister gives me when I am sick. Colouring in hearts. Finding blood in my underwear. Your lipstick the first time we kiss.
Home is
orange. Juice spilled on white counters. A creamsicle that makes my mouth sticky. Sunrises with you and sunsets without.
Home is
yellow. Stealing Dad’s beer when I don’t think he would notice. He does. The sharp sting of lemonade in my mouth. Your turtleneck I always wanted to steal.
Home is
green. Grass between my toes. That joint from the kid living in the dorm across the hall. Your eyes in the sun.
Home is
blue. The worst flavour of cotton candy. The ocean when it is warm. How I coloured in tears, how I coloured in sadness, because I did not know how to draw something invisible.
Home is
purple. A bruise fading. The aroma of lilacs, thick in the air, during the summer. Icing on cupcakes at my friends’ birthday parties.
Home is
gold. Sparks flying from a campfire. Your smile in the sunshine. Whatever it is that makes your heart shine so bright. A pot at the end of the rainbow.
Maybe it is not.
Maybe home is a journey, not a destination.
Maybe home is not a feeling, but a choice.
Maybe home is not a rainbow, but a storm. Maybe home is accepting you forgot your rain jacket and letting the cold seep into your skin and awakening something, something that lives within all of us. Maybe home is getting sick. Maybe home is the hard pill we dry swallow in the fleeting hope to feel better. Maybe home is the promise of something better.
Home is a maybe.