click click click
a reflection on missing faces and missing places
close your eyes
“click your heels 3 times” and make a wish
“there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”
but what if home isn’t a physical place?
what if it’s the tinge of skin from a pinky promise that left a burn on your bare and exposed finger?
what if it’s the way the lights shone on a face, flashing and blinking as two hearts throbbed to the same beat?
what if it’s bare feet on a tiled floor as music floods the living room?
what if it’s shouting from different rooms because even though you’re out of sight, the conversation must go on?
what if it’s dancing around the kitchen making coffee with your best friends on a saturday morning?
because what if it’s no longer a place?
does that means you can’t find your way back to it?
i’m clicking my heels
i’ve been clicking my heels
maybe i’m trying to return to myself
maybe i’m trying to keep a picture in my head that has softened into a rough draft
a sketch
a fading picture of a promise
a fun house mirror distorting a reality that should have been
or a habit turned into a dream
click click click
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if it turned out that we both had ghostwriters? Just imagine them taking a long walk together, walking, and talking only if something came up…” - Elif Batuman
maybe the wishes we keep tucked into the pockets of our coats— fingers crossed, words repeated, heels clicked — are tinged with cobwebs.
maybe the spiders that spin the webs, leaving them long abandoned, are reflective of us trying to keep hold of memories
maybe i’m wishing i was a ghostwriter
maybe i am
maybe i spin memories in between words
maybe i’m strolling and only talking as needed
maybe my poems are my way of remembering
maybe we spin webs and hold onto things because we need to
maybe we spin them to survive
“Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you'd know it's a flood.”― Ocean Vuong
click click click
glug glug glug
i left university 3 months ago and the memories, good and bad, ache
the beginnings, the conclusions, the friends now spread thousands of miles apart, the pain, the aches, the beauty, the ashes, the realizations, the dreams, the habits
they are water
memories recede like the tide and then they return
click click click
glug glug glug
and i’m back to myself
to my senses
i’ve been home all along
i carry the beauty and the pain with me
because sometimes a flood comes and the roof floats away
and maybe it hurts
and maybe you grow
and maybe you’re just soaked
but wreckage or not, a home is a home
a place of inches marked on the wall
of growing pains
click your heels
return to yourself
BEAUTIFUL 👏