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A Poem by Taal Seth

Where is my home?

Home.

At four I learnt home was someplace you belonged.

Home.

At six, I was told of the difference between house and home.

Home.

At thirteen, I began to understand this difference. At thirteen, my hands first picked up a pen and as soon as the first word flew out of the nib of my pen, it was as if I couldn’t stop. At thirteen was when I began writing about home and the heart and the way many times, your heart could belong more inside of someone else’s fingers than inside of your own ribcage.

Home.

At fifteen, my eyes dug into yours as you told me about your idea of love and I gasped as your lips met mine and in that moment, I knew why they say “our lips met” the same way they say “our eyes met.” It felt like they were meeting�"for the very first time.

You see, I give first conversations a very special place in my heart. And my heart belonged in your powerful hands. I was a silly one, I know, very trusting. Not too scared of the world. And you? You got me feeling even higher with your right words and your gentle but groundbreaking kisses. So during the first conversation your hiding, intangible eyes had with my exposing brown ones, I knew I was going to keep it locked away in the bottom of my heart. And the bottom of my heart was ever solely touched by only your powerful hands.

That night, I tried to write. But my words were stuck at my fingertips no matter how hard I tried to force them out of me. And the thing with forced is that they often end up looking too forced. I remember I once wrote, “If somebody kills you, you die.”

Your perfection struck me as the most beautiful metaphor I’d ever seen. They say nothing manmade is perfect but you’d been forced to turn cold, bulletproof, and you were my epitome of perfect. I guess manmade is all we’ve got, so perfect is what we’ve got to strive for. But you were already there.

Home.

On my sixteenth birthday, you gifted me back my own heart.

“I’m sorry,” you said, “I let this go on for too long.”

But my heart had only ever felt like it truly belonged sitting inside the comfort of your powerful hands. Your touch was the greatest poetry my heart had ever analysed.

At sixteen, I lost home.

But at sixteen, I realized that home is where the heart is and the heart is nowhere other than inside of my own self. You sure gave me a lot of metaphors but my heart is just another body part I can’t possibly survive without. My heart in your hands was just a metaphor until it wasn’t. Until it began taking over me. I lost pieces of myself the most time I spent with you.

You made me realize that this life is short but this life is the longest anyone ever got and I’m thankful for that.

But I’m done seeking refuge in the happiness of others. My poetry might still be about you but I know where my home is now.

If home is someplace I belong, home is in my own skin.