Where I Also Call Home
There’s a house here that I go back to every day after school’s out. I sleep and I eat and I do homework and I watch TV and I talk to my family and I text my friends here in this house. I keep all my stuff in a room in this house and I spend most of my days in this house. But it’s not my true home.
I don’t belong here and I won’t stay here forever. There’s another home where I do belong and I’ll be back there soon but it feels like it won’t be for years.
Every summer, for just a week, I live on Emerald Isle. In the cool turquoise waters and beneath the shining sun and deep sky. A different house every time but it’s the same because I walk on the same beach and there’s the same shopping square and the same pizza place and the same stunning ocean. This is my true home, the place I belong.
When I’m there, I wake up with the ocean outside my window and sand on my pillow from the day before. Maybe I eat breakfast first or maybe I go for a walk on the beach first or maybe I eat my breakfast on the beach it doesn’t really matter. Usually we swim in the ocean before lunch, my brothers Max and Stanley and me and my dad jumping through the waves and diving underwater. My mom hangs back and the most she’s ever gotten into the ocean was the time she got water up to her knees and then said it was too cold and got out again. After lunch, we usually will go out somewhere like the shopping square where my favorite store Dragonfly Import is. They sell one-of-a-kind jewelry and clothes there and one time I got a blue bracelet there that my mom says brings out my eyes.
Maybe after that we’ll eat dinner at Michaelangelo’s Pizza where the cashier remembers us every year. One time after we ate there we were leaving and it started raining so hard that we had to run into a shoe store and we were stuck there for an hour while the rain stopped. It was fun though because now the shoe store owner is our friend.
And at the end of the day, when the sea breeze kicks up and we pull our sweatshirts over our swimsuits, we’ll go back to the house we’re staying in and sit on the deck and look out at the ocean. The sun sets and another perfect day in my perfect home is gone. And when we pack our bags into the car on our last day, I’ll look out at the ocean and I’ll be sad. But I know I’ll be back home next summer.
I don’t belong here and I won’t stay here forever. There’s another home where I do belong and I’ll be back there soon but it feels like it won’t be for years.
Every summer, for just a week, I live on Emerald Isle. In the cool turquoise waters and beneath the shining sun and deep sky. A different house every time but it’s the same because I walk on the same beach and there’s the same shopping square and the same pizza place and the same stunning ocean. This is my true home, the place I belong.
When I’m there, I wake up with the ocean outside my window and sand on my pillow from the day before. Maybe I eat breakfast first or maybe I go for a walk on the beach first or maybe I eat my breakfast on the beach it doesn’t really matter. Usually we swim in the ocean before lunch, my brothers Max and Stanley and me and my dad jumping through the waves and diving underwater. My mom hangs back and the most she’s ever gotten into the ocean was the time she got water up to her knees and then said it was too cold and got out again. After lunch, we usually will go out somewhere like the shopping square where my favorite store Dragonfly Import is. They sell one-of-a-kind jewelry and clothes there and one time I got a blue bracelet there that my mom says brings out my eyes.
Maybe after that we’ll eat dinner at Michaelangelo’s Pizza where the cashier remembers us every year. One time after we ate there we were leaving and it started raining so hard that we had to run into a shoe store and we were stuck there for an hour while the rain stopped. It was fun though because now the shoe store owner is our friend.
And at the end of the day, when the sea breeze kicks up and we pull our sweatshirts over our swimsuits, we’ll go back to the house we’re staying in and sit on the deck and look out at the ocean. The sun sets and another perfect day in my perfect home is gone. And when we pack our bags into the car on our last day, I’ll look out at the ocean and I’ll be sad. But I know I’ll be back home next summer.
Windows
They say eyes are the window to the soul and I agree. When I look at your eyes I see more than a color; I see your thoughts and your memories and your feelings, even the hidden ones.
My mom’s eyes look a little like mine except they have pressed flowers and fields of goldenrod and all the memories from before she was in America that I wasn’t there for but I still see. And my dad he has green eyes that reflect the burning sun of Africa and the skyline of London at night and all the friends he left behind. And my pretty little kitty cat with her perfect round blue eyes. She had a life before we got her, filled with hunger and being scared that I see buried deep in her lovely clear sky eyes.
On the other side of the world, my best friend with wise dark brown eyes, she looks up at the same sky as me so we will always be connected even across ten thousand miles. And the girl sitting next to me, who overthinks everything, who bugs me when I’m trying to work, who can send secret messages to me with a flick of her hand and a wink, her eyes exhibit a rainbow of colors but beneath that are the memories that mirror my own from so so long ago.
The person I look up to the most, hers are the color of October and I don’t know her well but I can still see what she tries to hide and why she pretends to be strong.
And the girl I sit with at lunch. Her bewitching gaze, the twinkle when she laughs, the unique eyes that I wish were my own.
I was born with blue eyes. The color of the sky in the afternoon when I’m walking home from school. My eyes are more green now, like a mix between my mom and my dad, like the color of the ocean in Emerald Isle that I swim in every summer, like a peacock’s feathers only not as bright.
But what do you see beneath that? What can you see in my eyes that nobody else will ever see and ever know?
My mom’s eyes look a little like mine except they have pressed flowers and fields of goldenrod and all the memories from before she was in America that I wasn’t there for but I still see. And my dad he has green eyes that reflect the burning sun of Africa and the skyline of London at night and all the friends he left behind. And my pretty little kitty cat with her perfect round blue eyes. She had a life before we got her, filled with hunger and being scared that I see buried deep in her lovely clear sky eyes.
On the other side of the world, my best friend with wise dark brown eyes, she looks up at the same sky as me so we will always be connected even across ten thousand miles. And the girl sitting next to me, who overthinks everything, who bugs me when I’m trying to work, who can send secret messages to me with a flick of her hand and a wink, her eyes exhibit a rainbow of colors but beneath that are the memories that mirror my own from so so long ago.
The person I look up to the most, hers are the color of October and I don’t know her well but I can still see what she tries to hide and why she pretends to be strong.
And the girl I sit with at lunch. Her bewitching gaze, the twinkle when she laughs, the unique eyes that I wish were my own.
I was born with blue eyes. The color of the sky in the afternoon when I’m walking home from school. My eyes are more green now, like a mix between my mom and my dad, like the color of the ocean in Emerald Isle that I swim in every summer, like a peacock’s feathers only not as bright.
But what do you see beneath that? What can you see in my eyes that nobody else will ever see and ever know?
