What They Don't Tell You

What they don't tell you about the first time you come home

You'll come home expecting your world to be like a forgotten dollhouse
That things will be standing exactly where you left them
Only they'll have collected a layer of time and dust.
When really, people have grown and places have shrunk
You will suddenly look at everything through a microscope
Wondering and wanting to know how every boulder that played a role in your life
now seems like a grain of sand stuck in the bottom of your boot

You'll learn that growing up isn't exactly the carpeted staircase you thought it would be
That it's more like a path of stepping stones through a mud puddle
A balancing act of remembering, restoring, and running forward
That somedays your soul will ache for people and places and past validations
It will feel like chunks of your heart have fallen through the cracks of your ribcage,
Crumbling like plaster
Try not to think of it like you are missing pieces,
but that you now just have a lighter heart and more room to breathe

You'll start to wonder how you ever went to bed before midnight
Or functioned without coffee
Or woke up before 8
Your entire concepts of early and late and being free will have changed entirely
You always expected freedom to be painted on the wings of birds flying down familiar roads
and off into the great unknown
Now, freedom is what binds you to coffee dates with your papers and laptop
The responsibility of getting yourself to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up at one too
Operating on your own clock, the minute hand running far too quickly
As hours catch up with sunsets, and days bump into one another,
politely asking if they could just borrow a couple more minutes of sleep and solitude

They never tell you that home slowly transforms from a building into a feeling
That your feet are more trained to walk back into the lives of others
than to walk back into old rooms and closets
You'll seek solace in voices and eyelashes and outstretched arms
That even though everything's changing
at least the change will always be constant
That the way your sisters smile and the way your mother laughs and the way your papa hugs you
will always be home