Temporary Home

An explanation.

Leaving college and freshman year behind for the summer was the most heart-breaking thing I'd experienced all year. I sat in the airport waiting for my flight that was delayed for ANOTHER two hours (is Southwest ever actually on time?) when I couldn't handle it anymore. I couldn't take the fact that I was leaving home.


But wait, I thought to myself, you're not leaving home. You're going home. 


And that's when I realized that if home is really where the heart is, then I must have some genetic deformity that leaves its host with two blood-beating, life giving organs. I felt split in space and time. I had two homes. Two places where I was welcome and comfortable and loved. Two geographical locations that I found I could miss simultaneously. After thinking on this for a bit, I fired up my computer, waited twenty minutes, and wrote myself a little poem. (It was a twenty minute wait because I felt that the 86-year-old woman with two hearing aids listening to a book on tape deserved the power outlet more than I did. Plus she was listening to Lord of the Rings. And you don't interrupt that. But I digress).

Tapping my feet
Anticipation welling up
Inside of me, heart pounding
As I await the metal bird
That takes me home.
Leaving my second skin
In the middle of the desert plain
And traversing the cold blue heavens
Of white and blue
That lead me home to you.
But inside
In the back of my mind
Like a dark cloud
Hovering, sneaking up behind
Is the sorrow as I leave
This place of mine
Where friends reside in laughter
And bittersweet happiness.
It’s a strange feeling
Tears and smiles
That leave me bursting with emotion
So strong, so quick
I can’t control
When or what I feel.
Goodbyes were said
Memories reminisced
And now as I leave this second skin
To slip back in
To the old one
I’d thought I’d lost
I realize that this place is more
Than just a temporary home.