Go Home

I just want to go home.
No, not only this
house that I eat in
and sleep in every night,
not only the place I live in, spend my time in.
No, I want to go to a home with a kitchen table, yes,
me and my parents
laughing and talking and eating good food,
but also to a home with
a messy blue locker in an empty hallway,
just me and my friends, alone,
because we're late for lunch,
laughing and touching surfaces
that everyone touches.
To a home with
a playground--back when school
had a playground and
recess wasn't optional,
to a swingset with us ten-year-olds,
swinging and singing at
the top of our lungs,
not a single care in the world.
To a home with endless hugs and high-fives,
a home with parties and concerts and
farmers' markets where we'd always
run into someone we knew,
running across the street, ringing the doorbell,
listening for its chime, and the footsteps of my neighbors,
a home where nothing was wrong,
where there was only joy, joy, joy,
no space for anything else. No space for darkness.

Oh, if there was a way to go back in time, or
a way to prevent covid, or
a way to let myself
live in two places,
go to two schools,
at once,
a way for all the homes I've ever known
to collide into one, to relive every moment
when life was at its best--
well, I'd leap for that possibility and hold it tight,
but I know there is no way
for home to be all these things at once
except for the definition of home I hold
deep within my heart.