homesick.

on longing for something that has grown mold.

Homesickness is a disease that eats away at the soul, craving a home that no longer exists. The structure and the walls still stand proud like they always have but the very essence that held the myriad of materials and memories together is corroding, haunted by the ghosts of lost love and lives lived.

It reeks of the dreams we had, the ones that never left those off-white walls. The promises that stayed entombed in the alcoves, hidden behind frames with eyes that glare accusations my way.

I can’t outrun them in this house. I am homesick but that home is now a prison, a wasteland of memories with edges still too sharp.

The carved initials hidden throughout the house wring out stories from the last dregs of our youth. When the sun had shone brighter and the leaves had been greener. When you had still looked at me with that childlike unguarded fascination. When your eyes spoke a language i was learning to be fluent in. Now they’re an impenetrably dark abyss, dotted with the glowing embers of a dead language.

The place i once called home is shrouded in the sun’s dying light, careening towards its inevitable death, waiting to welcome a time when even the ghosts grow lonesome.

I open the door to see your face 
for the impending rush of coldness, I brace 

the cold of my days old chai 
the cold of my grandfather’s lifeless body 
the type that makes you question why 
the cold that seeps into you softly 
like my windshield when the clouds sigh 

the cold that seeps into the soles of your leather shoes until u think it’s dripping 
the cold of your eyes as the past that held us together was crumpling 
the cold of your fingertips when you forget your gloves 
and the cold of your heart as it forgot to love