He felt like home to me.
He was there. He was a window into a time and place I wish I could do over but he was there.
Now a shadow of the boy I thought I knew… this man… the culmination of unattainable perfection with the eyes of a hero.
And he felt like home to me.
The painful reminiscence of then and now blended such that nothing is safe or free of the memory of him. Here or there… then or now… it will always be home to me.
He was there. He saw the wickedness in me reflected almost as sharply as the goodness in him and I had to turn away. Remain on the periphery of one another’s lives. He was untarnished. Warm and thick with a tenderness of heart that made the music real and the suffering quiet. For a while.
I should have kept him in his glass case like the memories of magic Christmases that can never be cloned. Like the terror of the first roller coaster ride, the feel of him from way back then could never be harnessed.
But I tried anyway. And the tinsel shone and the butterflies fluttered and for a while it felt like they might stay. The girl and the boy from home with barely a kiss between them and forsaking the others would circle back into this new and strong and better but somehow still home.
And he felt like home to me.
Now home is a memory of a person I can never be again and of a place I can never repeat.
Even after we left. He was there.
So where do you go… when home doesn’t want you anymore. When all that’s left slips through your fingers, as if home was something you ever really had a grasp of anyway.
Because home is not a thing. It’s an illusion of safety. A blind hope for a future that keeps you a broken child.
He said it felt like fireworks to kiss me.
And he will always feel like home to me.