I am home now

Someone just honked in a rly specific rhythm on the main street outside the neighborhood.

I am home now.

Notes on remembering

There's a smell of a pool on the street this time. I guess it wasn't the lady that smelt like that.

There's a house that has a tree almost as tall as the house itself and covers so much of the front yard. Is this what all the trees will become after a few years?

Two men were playing table tennis in their front yard.

The police car waited for me to cross the street before it left the neighborhood.

I felt like I didn't have any worries at all when I went to the secret new park. I left them all there.

I saw the same middle aged couple on the other side of the neighborhood now. They reminded me of my parents from a distance again!

Its really late now so no one is in the old park either. Or on the streets. Its quiet except for passing cars and crickets.

Someone on my street has fairy lights wrapped around the trunk of a palm tree. Just like they did in Qatar.

The breeze was really cool today for the first time all summer.

Notes on remembering

New houses and windows and furniture
Imagining coming back here when all the trees are huge and blooming.
An old man on a walk.
A man and woman in home clothes/exercise/pjs going on a walk.
So many trees illuminated by street lamps. Against a dark navy sky.
After coming back on my everyday path, looking back on the street I just came from feels like I just left a mini Narnia.
A police officer who got out of his white and blue flashing lights car to talk to two men stood in front of a van.

Notes on remembering

Burnt smell
2 friendly cats. Ginger/brown and black and white.
A man jogging with headphones.
A lady who smelt like a newly filled swimming pool - she was on the call meeting someone.
A mom teacher her daughter to ride a bike.
A new empty part - it was so quiet and secluded between all the houses it felt like a new country.
Billions of stars.
A crescent moon but I could see the whole outline of the moon.
A passing satellite
A red unmoving star- was it a planet? Perhaps Mars? (I was able to see it from all my neighborhood but I only noticed it when I reached the new park)
2 new skyscrapers in the distance with white lights lighting up the top.

Notes on remembering

lady walking her dog

family of three

old man

cyclist lady

two maids cycling

mom and son on staircase

a family coming home from the airport

lady on phone on front porch stairs

Permanence

If home
is where the heart is,
mine will always be with me.

It is permanent.

The pain and struggle of a different view,
new window frames,

each time with different seasons.
I came to see that with each view,

comes new memories.

Each season,
brings new bonds.

Every time I long for a home
Every struggle and longing for a home
where my heart can truly thrive,

I found
nesting
in my own mind.

Yearning

I yearn for something that doesn't exist.
In any brick or leaf or road I come across.
I don't have a place in it.

Each new city beating to its own drum.
In which I step into with unmatched footsteps.

Instead

I look to each unknown land to console me.
With its own language.
To listen to each word it speaks.

I yearn for something that doesn't exist.
I am consoled by the isolated middle eastern night.
As I am consoled by imagined lives in foreign lands.
As I am consoled by slow bright lit mornings of the place I was born.
And now have returned to
As a foreigner.

Until I learn of all the languages and their own histories.
Until I find my own.

Shell

I cannot destroy the roots from which I grew.

A new bed.
Old walls I want to hold on to.
Old walls I want to move on from.

Anger in footsteps that echo through these walls

A new kitchen.
Familiar to foreign smells and foreign to my own.
Perhaps I can erase these traces.

I am the smaller being that can never outlive larger masses of this home.

Ghosts of old houses passing through new doors.
Erase their traces until all that's left is
An Empty shell.

My Name

Guilt of foreign lands
Over new horizons
looks to the sky
And asks for a name

Ancestors
And their heroes
Look to today
To ask for a name

Candles burned
Through generations
Look to the light
And ask for a name.

Traces of words from
Older stories
Look to this book
And ask for a name.

Is it mine?

All In My Head

Its all in my head but
It feels as though the unlit rooms
The orange tinted moon
And un wavering street lamps
All share a melancholy feeling.

Its all in my head but
It feels as though there's a message in the wind.
"Travel well" it translates to.
A place where it feels like my story started.
"Will you miss me?"
An empty question posed to an empty sky.

Its all in my head but
It feels as though strangers now recognize me.
Is it a greeting in passing,
Or does it mean more?
A place where every light in every home
Fills up a sea of stories.
Of which I wonder if mine will have a place.

Steps taken in fascination
Now filled with remorse
A last glimpse at the city lights.
The labyrinth of bridges

It feels as though this light,
This air, the passing greetings,
The broken sprinkler,
The deserted street.
It sits waiting for me to pass.
For the last time.

But of course,
Its all in my head.

Home Spirit

The ghost of this place passes through doorways. Peering over empty walls and heavy boxes. Silently and sadly wishing us well.
A stagnant spirit lingers over hasty happenings and wishful thinking.

As light filters through, it breaths among the dust. A long wandering ghost.

There is corner where I discovered new music. Perhaps it listened with me. From door to door, held so many memories. Of conversations and realizations of myself. Perhaps it was walking with me.

The same light that filtered through each day, somehow came to mean something new with every new dawn. A new understanding. A new feeling. A new song. A new photo. A new poem.

Perhaps it passed through each meaning. Until it was full of the spirit of this place. Until it shared the same beauty in its eyes that I have for it.

And perhaps it will walk until the doorways are left unpassed. Gates locked. Until it sits where I once sat, to take in the view of what we made. To become the spirit of us.

Or perhaps it will empty out itself.

Until it is once again a shell.
For the next home.

Memory

To beg for the seconds to stop ticking.
For shadows to freeze
So I can bask in the sunlight
A bit longer.

To demand my memory to stay
For images to be embedded
So I can feel the breeze
A bit longer.

Words that don't come to me
Bellow out my cry.
Door to desperation
Opened once again.

And we are back.

Fearful of thrills that await.
Fearful of uncertainty that rests.
With us.

If I call out to you in all the desperation,
It still won't reach you.

Grow

To go through me,
I'll build myself
For you the most
Pleasant home.

You are not mine
But rather a being
Passing through me.

Hope that this
Time
Will shine through you
As you grow.

Hope that this
Time
Rests as the best
Nurturing painless
Home.

To go through me
I'll build myself
A passing comfort.

To go through me and move on.
To have your passing comfort.
I will live
For you
To grow.

So that you never lose me.
So that you never lose home.

A permanently temporary comfort.

Snow

Dusk falls onto us
And I call out for home
Where does it live?

I wanted so badly to find
A place I could call mine.
Under desert suns
The sky met the sea where we learned to run.

Until I beg the clouds to stay
To pour down some rain.
Only to dream of sights
Of snowfall from white skies, diffused light.

Twenty years ago
Destined for sharp shadows.
Now in non-existent homes
Bid farewell to sea lights to find where I'll roam.

Where my steps take me
Footprints leaving lost dreams.
Until sun dawns and I can say
To me

You've done well
My dear you're home.

Questioning
the peeking sun
An eternity of
Wishful imagination
Snowflakes settle silently
Before white skies
Open up to me
Lighting horizons
For me to see

Footprints left in lost dreams
Maybe then I can say
To me
You've done well
My dear you're home.